How New Education Policy (Nep) Strengthens Rte: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

A more comprehensive system of education started taking its roots in India only after independence. It established University Education Commission in 1948 and secondary Education Commission in 1952. Every passing decade was witnessing a flavor of change with new thinking, developments, and technological advancements influencing the India and the globe in one way or the other. The construct of education development led to announcement of First Education Policy in 1968. 3 This Policy had radical structuring, talking about compulsory education for the children up to 14 years as directed under the Constitution with right qualifications and the training of the teachers, making Hindi as the national language and increasing education spend to 6% of the national income etc. Second Policy was more comprehensive and announced in 1986 with special emphasis on equality and the removal of disparities. It had provision for the scholarships, promotion of adult education, incentivizing the poor families for sending their children to schools, making primary education child centric, and expanding nationwide primary schools. 2 This Policy incorporated some elements of ‘Common minimum program’ in 1992. Going along all this, right to education of children kept attaining added focus and got further triggered by Supreme Court’s decision, to be a fundamental right, which eventually with the amendment in the constitution was declared a fundamental right and the early childhood care and education got included in DPSP instead. In order to enforce this, need was strongly felt for an enactment and thus, Right of children to free and compulsory education Act, came into being in 2010. With a great deal of effort made to implement this Act, more than 95% children are now in schools with much better developed infrastructure but with a challenge of improvement of the learning outcomes. Nevertheless, envisaging the global scenario and rapid changes happening in the socio-economic environment influenced by the technology, immense need was being felt to rethink rather seriously to bring out a Comprehensive Policy and Program to redefine the existing educational system to meet the demands of future. After an extensive exercise, New Education Policy, was formulated and announced in 2020, to be implemented over a period of time. NEP 2020 is a well thought and debated transformational Policy for the entire education system of India, with a vision, a social purpose and future perspective. But, its implementation will require multiple initiatives and actions, in a synchronized and systematic manner and at ground level, it has many points to further strengthen the RTE, for its own success for the school education,