Education as a sector has been in a state of flux for last 18 months. I had elaborated this in much detail in my blog https://anythingunderthesunandbeyond.blogspot.com/ on 2nd June 2021 titled " Examination - Cancellation and Saga of Online education. However the point of argument here is different. This is about content of education and the multiplicity of boards. The mess that is there in terms of who controls what education and what is the need of so many different organizations/boards/councils etc.
Education starts with schools which means KG to 10th or 12th. There is no formal board affiliation for KG students while it starts from 1-10. There are boards like CBSE which are kind of government controlled to those like CISCE, IB, IGCSE and all different state boards. There is lot of variation in the study material, methods of teaching in all these boards. My question is in these formative years and in one country what is the need of these many education boards. The least we can do is to make one board (lets say CBSE) and remove all state boards. We can continue with vernacular languages as medium of teaching. When we are looking at starting vernacular medium in technical education, this is the least we can do. However the fact remains that up until class 8 schools in different states should have portions of local history and geography and may be local language as a third language
Now lets move to the 11th and 12th standard as called in school and junior college in some places and +2 in some places. This is the level which kind of gives direction to kids for their future but is in a complete state of flux. There are CBSE, CISCE etc but not all schools have classes post 10th. These kids then have to look for junior/+2 colleges under various state boards. Please remember state boards for class 11-12 are different from 10th boards in some states. Then the streams of Science, Commerce etc. further adds to the confusion. Here also there is a need move to one board system as mentioned above with some local flavors based on the need of the same. Also this level either have to come under school or move to colleges. NEP 2020 intends to do some work in this direction though but there is no timeline.
Higher education is a complete mess with UGC controlling university education, AICTE handling technical education with multiple boards under it handling different forms of technical education like engineering, pharma, architecture etc. Who controls universities which are completely technical in nature? Furthermore there are accreditation bodies like NAAC under UGC who rank colleges based on certain criteria and weightages which are far from being transparent.
What I have mentioned here are only on the governance structure. The actual implementation is far from adequate and leaves a lot wanting. NEP 2020 may be a good intention but there are certain things like boards systems as I mentioned above still remains untouched and chaotic and there is nothing on ground for implementation of the NEP2020. There is no fixed timeline for changeover to the new policy and states and institutions implementing them at their own time frame will create a lot of confusion with students and parents and even the industry which eventually employs them.
It is critical that the sector improves rapidly in this country for us to grow socially and economically with the pace that we are looking for. I do not have enough vocabulary to express how strongly I feel about this and what this pandemic has done to these children.