By Ashok Pandey and Amit Kumar
Sir Ken Robinson (1950-2020), in his renowned Ted speak “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” shook the conscience of educators worldwide. “Explorer’s Academy,” he answered to college young children, who wanted to know what he would like to contact his dream college. As NEP 2020 requires-off, amid higher expectations, we need to have to future proof education.
Everything revolves about teaching and studying. Pedagogy have to evolve to make education more experiential, holistic, inquiry-driven, discussion-primarily based, versatile and enjoyable. Linking curriculum with sector and genuine-life will engage the learners. The pedagogy have to also shun predictable pattern. The stimulus-response-studying model need to give way to meeting challenges, experiencing the excitement and owning of understanding.
Health and well-being is significant. The Lancet report on Child and Adolescent Health, 2019 concludes that addressing the challenge of malnutrition and overweight is vital to guarantee optimal cognitive development, all round wellness and productivity. In India, successive Governments have launched several schemes to boost meals and nutrition for young children. However, there is a need to have to integrate physical well-being, nutrition efficiency, and emotional wellness linking with good quality education. NEP 2020 acknowledges that undernourished and unwell young children can’t understand optimally and proposes that properly educated social workers, counsellors, and neighborhood will assistance the schooling technique.
Access to technologies is access to education. COVID-19 exposed schools’ unpreparedness to move on the net and digital inequalities. It also reinforced the need to have to accelerate efforts to embed technologies in education. The universal studying style have to encompass digital literacy, digital pedagogy, technologies embedded-lesson plans, AI-fostered versatile assessments, differential group-work and assignments. Online teaching is not about watching videos or listening to podcasts passively. Asynchronous engagements have to inspire curiosity to understand more.
Active studying and engagement are critical to a joyful studying expertise. Gamification of content eliciting selection creating, problem-solving and collaboration are at the heart of remote studying. In-service teacher coaching have to concentrate on digital capacity constructing. Alternate interventions by way of tv, radio, neighborhood broadcast might continue, but efforts have to speed-up to cover just about every village in the nation inside the ambit of broadband availability.
Unlike anyplace else globally, the Indian education technique has accommodated each government and the private sector. Both are contributing to produce human capital. When it comes to private schools, figuring out charge structure and annual hike raise issues, disputes and litigations. Covid-19 has additional revealed the fault lines. We have to tackle it urgently maintaining in thoughts constitutionally assured autonomy, expenditure requirements derived from per capita investment in the government schools, affordability, and the value of good quality education. NEP 2020 is conscious of these dilemmas. The query is, how finest to harness the private sector’s complete possible.
Pandey is director, Ahlcon Schools & Kumar is founder-director, Shabda. Views are private