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ernments/UTs to assess teacher’s performance. Currently, the RTE Act provides for free and com-
Further, a four year B.Ed integrated course to bring pulsory education to all children from the age of six to
about qualitative improvement in teacher education 14 years. The draft Policy recommends extending the
programmes in India has been conceptualised. The ambit of the RTE Act to include early childhood edu-
model curriculum prepared for this course includes cation and secondary school education.
crucial aspects like Gender, Inclusive education, ICT, This would extend the coverage of the Act to all chil-
Yoga, Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and Health dren between the ages of three to 18 years. In addition,
& Sanitation. the draft Policy recommends that the recent amend-
The teaching specialization would primarily be for
the primary levels and the secondary level. Ministry
of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the
National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) have Of the additional 10%
developed a dedicated digital infrastructure for teach-
ers, DIKSHA, with the aim to empower school teach- expenditure, 5% will be
ers of the country with access to innovative tech-
based solutions. DIKSHA is a unique initiative that utilized for universities
leverages existing, highly scalable and flexible digi-
tal infrastructures, around the needs of teachers for
effective teaching and administration. and colleges, 2% will be
PROPOSED POLICY utilized for teacher costs
According to the PRS Legislative Research, the Com-
mittee for Draft National Education Policy chaired or resources in school
by Dr. K.Kasturirangan proposes an education pol-
icy, which seeks to address the challenges of access, education and
equity, quality, affordability, and accountability faced
by the current education system.
The draft Policy provides for reforms at all levels of 1.4% will be utilized
education from school to higher education. It seeks
to increase the focus on early childhood care, reform for early childhood
the current exam system, strengthen teacher training,
and restructure the education regulatory framework. care and education
It also seeks to set up a National Education Com-
mission, increase public investment in education,
strengthen the use of technology and increase focus
on vocational and adult education, among others. ments to the RTE Act on continuous and comprehen-
sive evaluation and the no detention policy must be
EARLY EDUCATION reviewed. It states that there should be no detention of
The proposed education policy has observed sev- children till class eight. Instead, schools must ensure
eral quality related deficiencies in the existing early that children are achieving age-appropriate learning
childhood learning programmes. These include cur- levels.
riculum that doesn’t meet the developmental needs The current structure of school education must be
of children, lack of qualified and trained teachers, and restructured on the basis of the development needs
substandard pedagogy. Currently, most early child- of students. This would consist of a 5-3-3-4 design
hood education is delivered through anganwadis and comprising five years of foundational stage (three
private-preschools. However, there has been less fo- years of pre-primary school and classes one and two),
cus on the educational aspects of early childhood. three years of preparatory stage (classes three to five),
Hence, the draft Policy recommends developing a three years of middle stage (classes six to eight), and
two-part curriculum for early childhood care and ed- four years of secondary stage (classes nine to 12). The
ucation. This will consist of guidelines for up to three- Committee noted that the current education system
year-old children (for parents and teachers), and solely focuses on rote learning of facts and proce-
educational framework for three to eight-year-old dures. Hence, it recommends that the curriculum load
children. This would be implemented by improving in each subject should be reduced to its essential core
and expanding the anganwadi system and co-locating content. This would make space for holistic, discus-
anganwadis with primary schools. sion and analysis-based learning.

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