GS Paper 2
Syllabus: Social Justice – Education
Source: IE
Context: From a new policy that outlines the education roadmap for the next 20 years to sweeping changes in school textbooks and the opening up of the Indian higher education space to foreign players the education sector has made some positive changes in the past few years –
| Accomplishments | |
| New Education Policy (NEP) and Reforms | The NEP 2020 is a policy document outlining a series of reforms to be pursued in education till 2040. India has had three policies to date.
The NEP 2020 proposes vital shifts — from creating a system in which “children not only learn but more importantly learn how to learn” to one in which “pedagogy must evolve to make education more experiential, inquiry-driven, flexible” and in which there is “no hard separation between arts and sciences”. |
| National Curriculum Framework | The National Curriculum Framework (NCF), is a crucial policy document for revising textbooks and classroom pedagogy. Among its key recommendations are conducting board examinations twice a year, creating a semester system for Class 12 students, and providing students with the freedom to pursue a combination of science and humanities, aiming to reduce the rigid boundaries between arts, commerce, and science in classes 11 and 12 across all school boards. |
| School Textbooks | The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the apex body advising the Centre on school education, has three rounds of revisions in school textbooks. |
| Foreign Universities | The UGC is giving the final touches to a regulation that would allow foreign universities to establish campuses in India that have their own admission process, the freedom to determine fee structures and recruit faculty and staff from here and abroad. |
| New Institutions, Enhanced Capacity | In addition to the new centrally-run educational institutions (including 7 IITs, 7 IIMs, 16 IIITs, and 15 AIIMS of which 12 are partially or fully functional) set up in the last nine years, there was a significant capacity enhancement of existing institutions by way of the EWS quota. |
| Female representation | The supernumerary seats were introduced for women at IITs and NITs in 2018, resulting in a rise in female representation from 9% in 2017 to 20% in 2022 at IITs over five years.
According to AISHE data, there has been a reduction in gender disparity in higher education enrolment since 2014.
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| Other significant changes and initiatives in education | The no-detention policy under the Right to Education Act 2009, which guaranteed promotion through Class 1 to 8, was scrapped in 2019.
A single agency to conduct all entrance tests to higher education, the National Testing Agency, was set up in 2017.
In a bid to end “inspector raj” and dismantle lobbies, the country’s apex medical education body, the Medical Commission of India, was dissolved in September 2020 and replaced with a new body – National Medical Commission.
The Higher Education Financing Agency or HEFA was set up in 2017 to leverage funds from the market to finance infrastructure development in educational institutions through long-term loans.
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| Pending Initiatives | |
| Autonomy | A recent investigation revealed that despite the promises of increased autonomy under the IOE scheme, much of it only exists in theory. |
| Vacant Faculty and Leadership Positions | According to parliamentary records, only 1,471 teachers have been hired across all central universities since the start of this recruitment drive, and approximately 6,000 positions (almost 30% of the sanctioned posts) remain unfilled. |
| National Research Foundation (NRF) | intended to incentivise interdisciplinary research, has not materialised despite being announced in consecutive union budget speeches from 2019 to 2021. |
| Higher Education Commission of India | intended to replace UGC and AICTE as overarching regulator, has yet to be established even five years after its initial announcement. |
| Digital University | It was announced in last year’s union Budget speech but has also failed to fructify thus far. |
Insta Links:
Prelims Link: UPSC 2018
Consider the following statements:
1.As per the Right to Education (RTE) Act, to be eligible for appointment as a teacher in a State, a person would be required to possess the minimum qualification laid down by the concerned State Council of Teacher Education.
2.As per the RTE Act, for teaching primary classes, a candidate is required to pass a Teacher Eligibility Test conducted in a accordance with the National Council of Teacher Education guidelines.
3.In India, more than 90% of teacher education institutions are directly under the State Governments.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 and 2
(b) 2 only
(c) 1 and 3
(d) 3 only
Solution: B
Mains Link:
The quality of higher education in India requires major improvements to make it internationally competitive. Do you think that the entry of foreign educational institutions would help improve the quality of technical and higher education in the country? Discuss. (UPSC 2015)
