LEGAL ASPECTS OF NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY 2020: AN INTROSPECTION

Abstract

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 that was in works since 2016 has come up with an extremely ambitious vision. It has delineated certain overhauls in the education system. As the global knowledge landscape evolves rapidly, the emergence of big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence poses the risk of automation replacing numerous unskilled jobs worldwide. Conversely, there is a growing demand for skilled labour, particularly in fields like mathematics, computer science, and data science, alongside the need for multidisciplinary expertise across sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Planners, first of all, cannot ignore the legal constraints resulting from constitutional, legislative or regulatory measures. For example, the obligation of ethnical non-discrimination in the enrolment process, gender equity, compulsory attendance and duration thereof, regulations governing the curriculum, teachers’ obligations etc. The policy raises a number of constitutional concerns. While some of these concerns regarding the medium of instruction in schools and the undermining of the federal principles have been raised, certain questions of educational equity and interests of marginalised groups remain unaddressed till date. Through this article, the authors attempt to provide a constitutional background to the concerns for educational equity, while highlighting certain inherent deficiencies in the NEP.