Congress Member of Parliament (MP) from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor, who was interacting at a conclave conducted by the SSVM Institutions in Coimbatore commented about the National Education Policy (NEP) introduced by the Central government.
The SSVM Institutions in Coimbatore conducted the third edition of Transforming India Conclave 2024 on the topic of Resilient Today, Sustainable Tomorrow and several speakers from across the country took part in it.
During the interaction, the MP was asked about the educational policy as he had served as a Minister of Human Resource Development between 2012 and 2014.
Replying to it, Tharoor said, "The policy affects both school and college education and I think some of the reforms in college education, adding flexibility, allowing students to take multiple courses are quite welcome. In school education, I am not satisfied with the idea of Anganwadi workers teaching literacy as many of them are not educated," he said.
Also, he said that he is not satisfied with the decision to allow schools to share facilities with other schools that are within a 30 km radius. In practice, no school which does not have a playground take their children to a playground far away every day.
He criticised that it would not happen and that it just be a paper exercise to allow the school to function without adequate standards.
"Some facilities in the policy sound good on paper, but I am worried about the practice. When the Prime Minister says a charge should be able to learn music and mathematics in the same school. Though it is probably true, both subjects need different infrastructures and faculties. It costs money and who is going to pay for it? Is the government is going to raise its budget sufficiently to subsidise all these innovations or we going to education more and more confined to the rich?" he said.
"Schools can simply pass on the extra cost to the parents. But I want education to be an excellent quality and it would be wonderful if every school offered both mathematics and music. But the government must provide the resources for all of these. Only then people can get benefit from these ideas,-" Tharoor added.
