NEP: Coming full circle
Reflections from the ground on navigating through the implementation of the New Education Policy
The Cabinet approved the New Education Policy (NEP) on 29th July 2020, and as the letter went out from the Department of School Education and Literacy to call for suggestions from school teachers in every state on the implementation of the NEP, I felt like my life had come around a full circle.
Working with a Member of Parliament last year, I had the opportunity to work extensively on the draft NEP. From consultations with think tanks to submitting amendments to the MHRD Minister as part of an Opposition delegation, I engaged with the policy when it was just a document of ideas. There was a sense of achievement that stemmed from the thought of being able to contribute, even a wee bit, to the next 20 years of education in India. However, soon after I began work as the Chief Minister’s Good Governance Associate in Gurugram district, I understood that to reach the desired consequences of a policy in the future, successful implementation is key in the present.
When a policy gets framed, it undergoes intensive scrutiny on its stated goals, but there is little attention paid to the feasibility of these goals — and feasibility is best understood by the implementers of the policy, who are the teachers in this case. As a result, the call for suggestions on NEP was met with great enthusiasm by the Education Department in the district as it gave officials and teachers a sense that their insights from the grassroots find a valid place in the larger discourse around education in the country.
In Gurugram district, multiple discussions took place with different stakeholders. There were smaller discussions that took place in the District Education Office with department officials, and larger discussions at the cluster level with members of Panchayats and School Management Committees over Google Meet. COVID enforced restrictions on gatherings was not going to dampen the spirits of the community. These discussions played a key role in throwing up challenges that policymakers had perhaps not foreseen and plausible solutions to the same. These grassroots solutions which emerged from these discussions are worth a mention.
A criticism of education in India has been that the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) has not got its due attention in the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) system. The NEP proposes to strengthen this. While the policy recognises that ECCE is the greatest and most powerful equalizer, operational details of how this would play out on ground are equally important to ensure successful implementation. For instance, the policy document is not clear on whether every Anganwadi or pre-primary learning center will be provided with an early childhood educator and a muli-purpose worker. So how does one then actually integrate early childhood care with education? In response to this ambiguity, an ingenious solution emerged through one of the discussions on NEP organised at a senior secondary school in the district. It was suggested to undertake a district-wide mapping of all Anganwadi centres to primary schools within the vicinity for support and to enable a more seamless transition to elementary education. Through this exercise, Gurugram can hope to achieve integration of childhood care with education.
The NEP envisages inclusivity and equity in all classrooms - a laudable policy goal. It mentions the creation of a culture of inclusion at the school-level, but once again, it does not describe procedural details of how to create this culture. A conversation one afternoon in the office of the District Education Officer, Capt. Indu Boken, helped me recognise that the creation of this culture would begin with the teachers. In a small step towards the recognition of this goal, Gurugram conducted a gender sensitisation workshop for 1700 Principals, Headmasters, and PGTs in October. The workshop covered topics like difference between gender and sex, gender division of labour, gender issues in a classroom and how teachers perpetuate the disparity, and the use of gender sensitive language. These 1700 teachers who participated in the workshop will now act as master trainers for other teachers in their respective schools - thus facilitating a butterfly effect. Incorporating equity and inclusion in classrooms was at the heart of the policy recommendations I worked on last year, and I’m glad to be able to push for it in government schools in Gurugram.
Another revolutionary aspect of the NEP, especially in the context of living in a post-COVID world, is the emphasis on digital literacy and online learning. However, this is easier said than done. According to the U-DISE statistics 2016-17, 40% of schools do not have access to electricity, and 73% of schools lack access to computers. The sharp digital divide and the unpreparedness of the public school system to deal with this became evident as schools across India have remained inaccessible to students since March. In Gurugram district, 12,000+ children in government schools do not have a smartphone at home to access e-learning. Without public investment in infrastructure, this policy goal simply cannot be achieved. But the spirit of educators and officials on ground is unbeatable. Whoever said that the government does not innovate has probably not worked closely with it. Teachers have worked hard to connect all students without a smartphone to a ‘Shiksh Mitr’ - a family member, classmate or neighbour with a smartphone that can be lent to the student for a few hours every day. As a result of this exercise, 90% of all government school students in Gurugram are now connected to class WhatsApp groups - where the majority of online learning and content sharing has taken place since the lockdown was imposed. Monthly e-ptms are also organised in the district where teachers reach out parents of their students over the phone. In the last e-ptm conducted in Gurugram, parents of nearly 75,000 students were contacted for feedback via phone calls, WhatsApp video calls and Zoom. Before COVID, interactions between teachers and parents were limited - a visit to their child’s school implied the loss of a day’s wages. However, the adoption of low-cost technology like mobile phones has enabled a continuous two-way dialogue between parents and teachers.
By the end of September, 206 schools and 4563 people had participated in these discussions on NEP in Gurugram district. To me, these collaborative consultations with people at the grassroots represented a truly democratised approach to policy-making. Three months of being on the field during a pandemic have thrown up a multitude of challenges (and learnings) that I could not have imagined while working in the Parliament last year. It's fair to say that implementation deserves far more attention in the policy-making process of our country than it is currently given - it is the bridge connecting a document of ideas to its intended impact.
