Process begins to draft state education policy

The state government has initiated the process to draft the state education policy. The development comes around two years after an announcement in this regard was made by the AAP-led government.

On the basis of the report of an inter-department committee, the Education Department is learnt to have written to the Chief Minister’s Office to constitute an expert panel to propose a framework for the policy.

Officials privy to the development said the committee was likely to be constituted in the coming days. Before recommending names for the expert committee, the inter-department panel has been tasked to study the Centre’s New Education Policy (NEP)-2020.

While the AAP government has opposed the NEP, Opposition parties have been accusing the ruling party for silently implementing the NEP through the Department of Higher Education. States like Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal have refused to implement the NEP-2020. Experts said the NEP was an attempt to reduce the importance of regional languages.

The question being debated among the experts is whether it is a constitutional obligation of the states to implement the National Education Policy (NEP). Education as subject was transferred from the state list to the concurrent list through the 42 amendment in 1976. Experts feels the state’s curriculum framework should integrate with the national curriculum framework.

Recently, the state Education Minister had written a letter to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan expressing resentment over alleged “deliberate side lining” of Punjabi in the recently proposed CBSE exam pattern for Class X (2025-26), calling it a direct attack on the linguistic and cultural identity of the state.