Teachers body: 2020 National education policy deeply flawed

Dimapur: Expressing concern over the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, All India Federation of University and College Teachers’ Organizations (AIFUCTO) president Prof Kesab Bhattacharya termed it as “deeply flawed”.

According to him, the most important immediate impact of the implementation of the NEP will be the closure of government schools and a sharp increase in higher education dropouts from poor SC/ST backgrounds.
Bhattacharya was addressing a national seminar ‘NEP 2020: Envisioning Quality Higher Education’ at Kohima Science College, Jotsoma on Friday. The seminar was organized by AIFUCTO and All Nagaland Government College Teachers Association in association with Kohima Science College Teachers Association.
He said the NEP proposed the three Cs – centralisation, commercialization and communalisation despite the demands of almost all democratic organizations that the education system should be a combination of the three Es – equity, excellence and education for all. “This is one of the main reasons why AIFUCTO is opposing NEP 2020,” he said.
Bhattacharya said, “The new education policy is well-crafted, but when it is read, the policy will prove dangerous.”
He said that NEP aims to achieve gross enrollment of around 50 per cent by 2035 which requires huge financial outlay. He further said that the government had proposed that the expansion of education would be through the PPP (Public Private Partnership) model but the private was replaced by philanthropy.
He questioned whether charitable organizations would invest money for the promotion of education in the country without considering their profits.

Bhattacharya also questioned whether the government really wanted to acquire a scientific temper when Darwin’s theory of evolution and Mendeleev’s periodic table were being removed from the curriculum.
They also claimed that the NEP 2020 document does not mention anything about gender balance in education or women’s education.

Expressing concern over a credit system based on multiple entry-exit choices, he said it sounded good but could also encourage and legitimize dropouts in higher education so that only a few would make it to the top.
In his keynote address, AIFUCTO General Secretary Prof. Arun Kumar said that the NEP came into effect on July 20, 2020, ignoring the views of states and stakeholders.

Kumar said that AIFUCTO opposes NEP 2020 as it is against the basic structure of the Constitution.
He said, “NEP 2020 is the only education policy since independence which has neither been subjected to public debate nor tabled in Parliament nor scrutinized by the Parliamentary Committee on Education. ” he said and added that the approval was given entirely through an internal cabinet process
Kumar further alleged that public consultation on the policy was limited to certain ideological groups.

He said that the NEP 2020 is a major challenge to the time-tested structure of state funding and is against the federal structure of the Constitution.

Kumar emphasized that there is an urgent need to redesign NEP 2020 to be inclusive and to start with quality education as the focal point.