Opinion | Our national education policy is high on goals but low on realism
Live MintThe new National Education Policy is the third overhaul of India’s education system in the life of the Republic. Unfortunately, notwithstanding various policy measures, what we have is a shambles of an education system: one where students achieve perfect scores in history and literature at school, but PhD theses are, in a great many instances, embarrassing documents attached to unemployable graduates. It is unlikely that weighty terms—“social and emotional skills” and “holistic education”—can ever be substitutes for careful attention to the historical and structural issues that afflict the Indian education ecosystem. The mostly anti-learning board examination system—and the coaching culture around it—is sought to be tackled through continuous evaluations involving “state school examinations in grades 3, 5, and 8”. The structural problems faced by the university system are extremely unlikely to be solved by the establishment of a centralized administrative body, the noble but utopian goal of erasing distinctions between arts and science education, multiple exit options at the undergraduate level, creation of large multidisciplinary institutions, and allowing foreign universities to set up local campuses.