NEP, National Curriculum Framework, and the Federal Challenges in India
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This essay is part of the series “Five Years of NEP 2020: From Vision to Reality”
As the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 completes five years with its transformative potentials to modernise India’s education landscape, the time is ripe to take a glance at the progress made in key areas of focus. The centrepiece of the NEP is the development and implementation of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), which provides a roadmap for the education of children in different stages of school education (provides comprehensive guidelines, structures, curriculum, syllabi, teaching materials, and assessment tools/methods). After more than two years, the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) was released by the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on 23 August 2023. The NCF aims to catalyse and overhaul the school education system, particularly the educational needs of students aged 3 to 18 years, from foundational stages to secondary education.
The preparation of NCF was a mammoth federalised exercise involving a complex range of stakeholders at multiple levels.
NCF is not something new under the NEP 2020. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) developed the NCF back in 1975. It was majorly revamped in 2005 with special emphasis on overhauling the state of elementary education in India. With NEP 2020 having a transformative vision of making education interdisciplinary and relevant to 21st-century educational needs, designing an appropriate curriculum was considered by the key stakeholders. The stakeholders included 4,000 experts drawn from the Ministry of Education, NCERT, relevant ministries and state education boards, State Focus Groups by states and Union Territories (UTs), among others. These groups prepared Position Papers on 25 themes related to NCF, apart from more than 500 papers that were generated by states/UTs. 25 National Focus Groups also contributed Position Papers on national themes. In addition, District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) submitted as many as 1,500 consultation reports. In short, the preparation of NCF was a mammoth federalised exercise involving a complex range of stakeholders at multiple levels.
Major Controversies over NCF
From the methods of its preparation and curriculum subjects, to the manner of its implementation, the NCF has stirred major controversies on a number of issues. Education experts have raised objections to the manner and modes involved in finalising of NCF in 2023. While the NEP 2020 aims to promote a consultative process in preparing NCF, where State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERTs) will play a pivotal role in determining the State Curriculum Framework (SCF), in actual reality, the participatory process has been undermined in multiple ways. For instance, in preparing 25 position papers and SCFs, not only was an entire exercise conducted through a centralised technology approach, but they were instructed to organise paperless surveys and consultations (with e-templates and word limits on each question). As has been reported, many key survey questions were filled with “expected responses”. On top of it, position papers and SCFs were machine-read with pre-decided codes for inclusion in the National Curriculum Framework. In short, the process has been mechanical, lacking serious curricular and pedagogical discussions where states can be seen as equal participants.
An overtly centralising process?
While the finalisation of NCF with all its challenges represents a major progress in achieving NEP’s ambitious vision, experts have raised several concerns regarding the method of its preparation and the manner of its rollout. A noteworthy aspect of NCF is the centralising nature of its contents. According to the subject experts, while NCF is supposed to be a broad and guiding document for NCERT and SCERTs to prepare their syllabi, curricula and textbooks for different grades, the NCF document of over 600 pages lays out every detail for these bodies to follow. Not only this, NCF goes to the extent of spelling out syllabi outlines with a plan for sample lessons, even time to be allocated for each school (for example, an assembly requiring 25 minutes and 05 minutes to reach the same). In its zeal to micromanage curriculum preparation and its rollout, the Steering Committee has hugely centralised the NCF process, which defeats the larger goals of diversity and inclusion, where states should be treated as equal partners.
Further, NCF’s vision of imposing uniformity across states goes against the 2005 NCF, which had followed a decentralised and consultative approach to prepare the curriculum frameworks. This has led to several states, particularly opposition-ruled states, to oppose NCF. Some of them, like Karnataka, have set up their own expert bodies to frame a curriculum based on local requirements and learning needs.
NCF’s vision of imposing uniformity across states goes against the 2005 NCF, which had followed a decentralised and consultative approach to prepare the curriculum frameworks.
What has raised a bigger political storm with regard to curriculum is the arbitrary deletion and addition of syllabus by the NCERT. In a deeply plural and diverse country, NCERT’s decision to drop several chapters from the Class VIII history book in 2024 created a political storm over pedagogy and curriculum. A more recent controversy is on the Class VII textbook book which omits portions of the medieval history of India. Historians and educators have blamed NCERT for taking unilateral decisions on curriculum making, which violates the tenets of NCF-SE 2023.
Storm over NCF’s Three-Language Formula
Yet, a far bigger controversy erupted over the ‘three-language policy. It needs to be mentioned that NCF, which recommended a three-language formula for students till Class VIII, has largely retained the same from the 1968 NEP. Further, while the 1968 NEP had advocated for Hindi to be taught across the nation, including South India, the 2020 NEP does not add such specifics. It lays out that “the three languages learned by children will be the choices of States, regions, and, of course, the students themselves, so long as at least two of the three languages are native to India.” Yet, the old fear of Hindi imposition and the centralising nature of NEP has raised a massive political storm in Tamil Nadu and other opposition-ruled states. Ironically, the opposition to Hindi has now raised its head in Maharashtra, a state where the ruling party runs a coalition government. After major political showdowns over Hindi imposition, the state government has stalled the implementation of the language policy, subject to the recommendation of an expert committee. In short, many of the NCF outlines have become a political hot potato between the Centre and the states, having larger implications for the education sector.
Conclusion
The NEP 2020, in general, and the NCF, in particular, have emerged as a focal point of the centre-state battle over autonomy around the curricular and pedagogical realms. Given that education is a Concurrent subject under the Indian Constitution, states strongly view that they need to be treated as equal partners in all aspects of the NEP rollout, including the curriculum design and implementation. While the NEP has created mechanisms for the involvement of states and other local actors as critical stakeholders in the realisation of its transformative vision in the education sector, the NCF episode, as illustrated above, raises serious questions about the actual intent. That a lot of NCF outlines were pre-decided (by the steering committee and NCERT) while the involvement of state boards and district-level institutions is at best perfunctory. In short, NCF betrays the larger goals of diversity and inclusion, where states should be treated as equal partners.
With a number of controversies brewing over NCF (presentation of local issues, textbooks rewriting, language policy), one hopes the education policy makers would do the necessary course correction and make the NEP process far more inclusive and participatory. Considering the NEP 2020 is a colossal exercise involving a country of a continent size with massive regional, linguistic and cultural diversity, the NCF process and its execution have to be a deeply collaborative effort between the Centre and the states.
Niranjan Sahoo is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation
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