An expert panel appointed by the Centre has suggested a long overdue restructuring of the school education system. Last week, the committee released a “pre-draft” of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for public feedback on recommendations, which include giving senior secondary students the freedom to pursue a mix of arts, commerce and science subjects. This flexibility is in accordance with the multidisciplinary approach underlined in NEP 2020. The NCF’s proposal to assess the students’ capabilities in Classes 10 to 12 through examinations over four years — and not one board exam every year — also fits in with the NEP’s vision of “holistic education”. The changes will have an enhanced role for “well-designed” textbooks. Implicit in the NCF approach is also a greater role for the teacher.
It is increasingly becoming evident that the rigid boundaries between arts, science and commerce do not provide the child the foundational knowledge to deal with the more pressing challenges of today. Combating climate change and other environmental crises, for instance, require an understanding of politics, economics, sociology as well as disciplines that deal with natural phenomena. Business studies are not purely about what happens in the realm of commerce. Understanding of human behaviour plays an important role in shaping economic models. The significance of humanities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution has been underlined by several research papers. That’s why NEP “envisions a complete overhaul and re-energising of the higher education system”, including “moving towards a more multidisciplinary undergraduate education”. The new NCF approach could provide the groundwork for such a change at the school-level. It recognises that the current system encourages rote learning and does very little to develop critical skills. It rightly points out that a large number of students have developed a “fear” of mathematics and current methods of assessment have created a perception that mathematics is about “mechanical computation”. It, therefore, recommends a shift to play, activity, discovery and discussion-based learning at the primary school level.
In the coming weeks and months, the panel will hold several rounds of discussion on the “pre-draft”. An urgent task should be to ensure that the reforms are applied in an inequitable manner. According to the education ministry’s data, more than a lakh government schools in the country have just one teacher. Saddled with a number of responsibilities, the instructor may not be able to make learning a creative exercise, as the NEP and NCF demand. The NEP is alive to these concerns. The document’s section on empowering the teacher should not escape the planners’ attention while they lay the framework for reforms in school education.
