The new National Education Policy is expected to be announced at 4 pm on Wednesday after the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved it in a meeting today morning.
The last education policy was adopted in 1992, just before India witnessed the Internet revolution. The document, therefore, did not factor in technology in the advancement of India’s national education goals.
Apart from renaming the HRD Ministry as the Education Ministry, the new NEP is likely to announce the integration of early childhood care and education (ECCE) into the Right to Education Act ambit. ECCE covers the preschool years below age six. RTE Act currently doesn’t cover this segment which is primarily catered by the Anganwaris under the Women and Child Development Ministry’s Integrated Child Development Services scheme.
The new NEP envisages bringing ECCE component out of the purview of WCD ministry and under Education ministry. It also mandates the NCERT to frame the foundational curriculum for under six years children in the preschool stage.
“The Policy therefore focuses on developing an excellent curricular and pedagogical framework for early childhood education by NCERT and ECCE would be delivered through a significantly expanded and strengthened system of early childhood educational institutions, consisting of Anganwadis, pre-primary schools/sections co-located with existing primary schools, and stand-alone pre-schools, all of which will employ workers/teachers specially trained in the curriculum and pedagogy of ECCE,” says the draft policy framed by a panel led by former ISRO chief K Kasturirangan in 2019.
The policy says the traditional roles of families in raising, nurturing, and educating children also must be strongly supported and integrated with ECCE.
“In particular, family leave policies that afford women and men the ability to tend to their children in their earliest years of life are critical in enabling families to fulfil these traditional roles. To reinforce the public system’s commitment to providing quality early childhood care and education to all children before the age of 6, the Policy suggests that ECCE be included as an integral part of the RTE Act. The 86th Amendment of the Constitution in 2002, in fact, provided an unambiguous commitment for universalisation of ECCE by directing the “State to provide ECCE to all children until they complete the age of six years”.
Section 11 of the RTE Act also already discussed the possible public provision of early childhood education and said: “With a view to prepare children above the age of three years for elementary education and to provide ECCE for all children until they complete the age of six years government will make arrangements.”