NEP 2020 How Far Have We Come?

The business of policy-making for education is the business of nation building.

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'The makers of the future'

An education policy must both set national goals and map the paths to achieving them. It must provide a blueprint for what citizens, present and future, must do to “function effectively in our national life”, as the report of the first education commission of independent India put it.

The University Education Commission - better known as Radhakrishnan Commission 1948-49, after the philosopher and former President, S. Radhakrishnan - described universities as “the makers of the future”. But schools are too.

As the sociologist Andre Beteille pointed out in Universities at the Crossroads, independent India’s first policy makers focused on areas that interested the middle class higher education. In consequence, governments built great institutions of higher education - the IITs, IIMs, JNU, HCU, Jadavpur University and their like before building strong school systems. This was despite the very high degree of illiteracy among the masses, a situation which necessitated symbols for political parties.

It was close to two decades before the National Education Commission 1964-66 the Kothari Commission offered a national policy on schooling. It standardised school structures across states, gave us the three-language policy and a funding goal the elusive 6% of GDP to aspire to. The National Policy on Education followed in 1986 and it was revised into the Programme on Action 1992. This brought national-level entrance tests for professional programmes among other changes.