Can India successfully implement the new Education Policy in terms of teaching in multiple languages in the wake of absence of enough skilled teachers? Comment.
The NEP or the New Education Policy draft has laid a special focus on language education. It has specifically enumerated the benefits of being multilingual in children and stated that the knowledge of English leads to the creation of an elite group. It has also identified the knowledge of foreign languages a must for employability in future. The focus of this language education stretches from the primary to the doctoral level.
The policy states that children from the primary language should be taught in three languages while between Class 6 and 8 must be taught one of the Indian Classical languages like Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, etc. Furthermore, there should one mandatory course for students of upper primary i.e. 6-8 Class covering all the major languages of India under the title, �Languages of India�. It will be at the secondary level Class9-12, that students will have to make a choice of some foreign language. Even the ones who are pushing through their doctoral research will also have to study how to communicate the scientific results in a local language for promoting their ability for communicating outside the domain of their profession. If successfully implemented the Indian students will have a record of being trained in a maximum number of languages when they leave school.
Everything is good about the document but not the policy implementation phase as there is a severe shortage of teachers as it will require One million English teachers and one million teachers in other languages for effective implementation of this policy as there are 1.4 million elementary schools. Same holds good for teachers of foreign languages. The gap can be filled if the government proactively ropes in even the retired English teachers and maybe some graduate and undergraduate students can be imparted some level of pedagogic training or scholarships to go and teach in other states. Likewise, similar scholarships can also be offered to foreign nationals.
Topics: GS-II: Social Sector Services Education Human Resources