The direction that the NCF needs to take(The Hindu, GS-2, Social Justice)

23 Jul The direction that the NCF needs to take(The Hindu, GS-2, Social Justice)

Context:- National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has given the task to the SCERTs State Councils of Educational Research and Training  to develop four State Curriculum Frameworks (SCFs). This State Curriculum Frameworks (SCFs) will add up and form a national curriculum framework as given in National Education Policy 2020.

Which are they?:- 

• School Education
• Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE)
• Teacher Education (TE)
• Adult Education (AE). 

National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has recommended this.

• NCERT will provide templates in the form of questionnaires to the States to develop four draft SCFs.
• These templates are in the form of MCQs and Questionnaires which have been molded by NCERT.

Making NCF is an Inclusive process:-

• • NCERT is asking suggestions from all States and thus making the NCFs representative and inclusive documents.
  • National educational policy is devoid of any organizing principle to decide priorities, inter relationships and deriving curricular content and pedagogy from them.
  • On organizational as well as pedagogical grounds.

• What is the Issue:-

• • • The kind of questionnaires and MCQs that one develops can emphasize certain kinds of recommendations while sidelining some others.
    • For example, if government asks about public opinion on the medium of instruction for the ECCE the overwhelming majority is likely to favour English i.e. if one wants to exclude this, he may.
  • The NEP-2020 is document full with words like values, capabilities and skills and all are justified as it is needed for emerging market requirements.

• Lets take on organizational:-

• • • The ECCE plus Classes one and two (first five years of education, for the age group three years to eight years) is proclaimed as one stage, here the issue is that both act like a separate milestone.

• • Issue:-

• • • But the ECCE and Classes one and two will be run in separate institutions, for example ECCE is in anganwadi and class 1 and 2 in formal institutions. 
    • Their teachers’ qualifications, salaries, and training are supposed to be different
    • Their curriculum frameworks are supposed to be different but making it a single block is a worry.

• On  pedagogical grounds:-

• • • The value of completing a task and the behavior with respect to the surrounding is widely differ for a four year old and a six year old. 
    • Thus, the state and other people who are developing NCFs have to deal with these issues in addition to finding a method of making proper sense of gathered public opinion.

• National Education Policy 2020:-

• • • Target: 100 % Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) from pre-school to secondary school education by 2030. 
    • National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy – to ensure by 2025, all children in class 3 are able to do basic level of reading and maths.
    • No rigid separation between academic streams (sci vs commerce etc.) 
    • No rigid separation curricular and extracurricular activities 
    • No rigid separation between vocational and academic streams. 
    • Vocational Education to start from Class 6 with Internships. 
    • We’ll use counselors & social workers with schools e.g. Psychological counselling, sexual harassment, bullying, depression 
    • Open / Distance learning for classes 3, 5 and 8 through NIOS. 

• The NEP-2020 good recommendations:-

• • NEP provides flexibility in secondary education, examination reform at school and higher level, more exposure to Indian languages, and taking on board Indian knowledge systems can make our education system better.

Way forward:-

• One solution to this problem is to take a lot of help from the Secondary Education Commission Report (SECR) and Zakir Hussain’s Basic National Education (BNE) report on the values etc.. 
• The overall framework of values and future direction, current issues and problems of the education system, and public opinion must be taken from the above two documents in order for value based education.
• These documents are coherent and rigorous because documents place the values and principles of democracy and a morally, aesthetically and intellectually rich individual life at the starting point and try to resolve current economic problems in alignment with them.

Download Plutus IAS Daily Current Affairs of 23rd July 2021

Swarn Singh

Plutus IAS Current Affair Team Member