Concern: Govt ignoring stakeholders while implementing new education policy, say NISA
Srinagar: The National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA) of India on Wednesday accused the government of India for implementing the new education policy without taking major stakeholders on board.
Addressing a press conference here, President NISA Dr Kulbushan Sharma along with president Private Schools’ Association of Jammu and Kashmir (PSAJK) said the government of India was trying to finalize the policy in haste without taking proper feedback from the stakeholders and other academicians.
“The irony is that the members who have drafted the new education policy had no academician or teachers as a member. They didn’t take any feedback from a single teacher who are otherwise the main stakeholder in the education sector,” Sharma said.
He said the government of India has given one month time for giving feedback from stakeholders while as it took government of India three years to formulate the policy draft.
“The draft of National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 is a voluminous document aimed to confuse a common person. An ideal policy document should be around 20 – 30 pages so that it is easily understood by common people and experts alike, but the NEP 2019 is a huge 498 page document. It looks like a discussion rather than a concrete policy,” Sharma said.
Addressing reporters he said government of India should give stakeholders more time to discuss and react on the policy.
“We demand that the political party should make it a part of their election manifesto as the policy concerns entire India,” Sharma told reporters here.
Sharma accused that the draft policy document was plagiarized as scores of pages are copied from a website of Gujarat. “Education is unique to every place and one cannot brush everyone in the same colour,” he said.
Referring to the new education policy he said the education sector will have Rashtriya Shiksha Ayog (RSA) headed by Prime Minister which will erode the overall role and control of MHRD on education sector.
“It is equal to destroying entire educational governance infrastructure all over India. They should define the role of other institutions if everything will be controlled by PM headed RSA,” he said.
He said the decision to have B.Ed as integrated course after 12th followed by Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) will make institutions irrelevant in the state.
“If there is B.Ed then why is TET. It is major flaw in the policy. Does it mean that earlier courses like B.Ed were not up to the mark,” he asked.
He said there was no sufficient mention of the crucial issues such as gender, caste and the environment in the draft education policy.
“Human rights and constitutional rights issues are grossly excluded and Sanskrit and Yoga are projected beyond all reasonable proportions right from school education,” he said, adding that as per the draft, Hindu religious dogmas and Varnasramadharma should be injected into young minds in the guise of moral education in schools.
“The policy stresses skill on 80 percent students and quality education for chosen few. It seems the main aim is to make 80 percent students as bonded employees of capitalist world while as 20 percent will have an edge over them,” he said.
He said the earlier education policy was not also implemented as such policies become corruption oriented and students don’t get benefited with such policies.
“The problem is with implementation not in framing of these policies. Had the earlier policy been implemented strictly on ground, maybe we wouldn’t have had so many problems today,” he said.
KV Correspondent
