The Modi government on Wednesday announced New Education Policy 2020. The policy contains a series of changes including the change of name of Ministry of Human Resource and Development to Education Ministry, scrapping of M.Phil degree among others. One of the most controversial decisions the government has taken is the 3-language plan.
The new policy pertaining to the medium of instruction in schools, the policy states, "Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/ mother-tongue/ local language/ regional language. Thereafter, the home/local language shall continue to be taught as a language wherever possible. This will be followed by both public and private schools." The policy further says that at least two of the three languages should be native to India.
#RejectNEP trend of Twitter
Twitteratis have taken to the microblogging site to mark their protest against the new policy especially on the issue of medium of instruction. RejectNEP has been trending on Twitter at around 7 pm today. It was argued that the introduction of three languages looks problematic for the students whose parents keep on changing cities due to work for instance the personnel of Armed forces. It was further argued that due to inter-state migration a student will have great difficulty in learning the proposed language. Centre later clarified that "The three languages learned by children will be the choices of States, regions, and of the students, so long as at least two of the three languages are native to India." But the issues of migration seems to have been ignored by the government.
Privatization of Education
Another point of contention is the availability of language teachers in other states. For instance, if a school in UP decides to provide two language-Hindi and English-the choice of third native Indian language becomes complicated as in order to hire a language teacher the school have to put in extra funds. Even if a private school manages to hire language teachers given the availability of funds it would be impossible for a government-aided school as it already faces paucity of funds in the education sector which is not even one percent of GDP justifies the concern. Here are the top tweets from #RejectNEP.
