Educational Policies II (1986–2020)

NPE 1986: THE SECOND NATIONAL POLICY

A.1 Context and adoption

The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986 came under the Rajiv Gandhi government. It was preceded by a nationwide stock-taking document, "Challenge of Education: A Policy Perspective" (1985), which candidly listed the failures of the system. The policy itself was adopted by Parliament in May 1986 and was followed by a detailed implementation blueprint, the Programme of Action (POA) 1986.

Two counting facts to fix immediately:

• NPE 1986 is India's second national policy on education (first: 1968; third: NEP 2020).
• It was the first policy framed with education on the Concurrent List (after the 42nd Amendment, 1976), so Centre and States were now formally joint actors.

Trap: NEP 2020 was approved by the Union Cabinet, not Parliament — while NPE 1986 was adopted by Parliament. Examiners swap the approving bodies between the two policies.

A.2 The National System of Education

The heart of NPE 1986 is the idea of a National System of Education: all students, irrespective of caste, creed, sex or location, have access to education of a comparable quality. Its concrete components:

• A common educational structure of 10+2+3 accepted across the whole country (the Kothari structure, now made truly national).
• A common core curriculum running through all syllabi: the history of India's freedom movement, constitutional obligations, content that nurtures national identity, egalitarianism, democracy and secularism, equality of the sexes, protection of the environment, the small family norm, and the scientific temper.
• A child-centred approach: "a warm, welcoming and encouraging approach" in which the child learns through activity, not fear; corporal punishment to be excluded from the system.
• Emphasis on education for women's equality — education as an agent of basic change in the status of women — and a strong equity push for SC, ST, minorities and the differently-abled through incentives, scholarships and location of schools.

A.3 Flagship actions under NPE 1986

Operation Blackboard (1987) — launched to provide every primary school three minimum essentials:

1. at least two reasonably large all-weather rooms;
2. at least two teachers, as far as possible one of them a woman;
3. essential teaching-learning material (blackboards, maps, charts, toys, small library).

Trap: Operation Blackboard is about buildings, teachers and material in primary schools — not computers, not adult literacy, not secondary schools. A "computer lab" option in an Operation Blackboard question is always wrong.

Navodaya Vidyalayas (Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, JNVs) — the "pace-setting" schools of NPE 1986:

• fully residential, co-educational schools, one planned for each district;
• target group: talented children, predominantly rural, who would otherwise lack access to quality schooling;
• entry at Class VI through the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Selection Test (JNVST);
• run by the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, affiliated to CBSE; education, boarding and lodging are free.

Other NPE 1986 positions worth one line each: reiteration of the 6% of GDP spending target (from Kothari); vocationalisation of the +2 stage; "de-linking degrees from jobs" for selected services; a rural university concept; continuous and comprehensive evaluation as the direction of exam reform; and the promise to make NCTE statutory — fulfilled by the NCTE Act, 1993 (the statutory council began functioning in 1995).

Trap: IGNOU (1985) predates NPE 1986. The policy endorsed and expanded open learning; it did not create IGNOU. Any option crediting NPE 1986 with "establishing IGNOU" is wrong.