Chapter 3 - New Policies and Approaches

The New Education Policy



A national policy on education was introduced for the first time in 1968.

This policy document took a hard look at the education scene in India

and formulated certain strategies to revamp education. Though framed

two decades after Independence, the national policy stressed the need for

a ‘radical reconstruction of the education system’.

The new policy underlined the need to improve the quality of education at all stages and laid great emphasis on science and technology. The essentiality of moral

education as a means to inculcate moral values in people was stressed in this policy. It must also be mentioned that the policy framers realized the fact that there was a growing distance between India’s education and the life of the people, and therefore suggested that there should be a closer relation between them to make education relevant and useful to society.

Although the policy sought to address the core issues of education,

detailed strategies could not be worked out to implement it. The result

was that the problems of quality, access, lack of financial outlay, etc., could

not be tackled and the accumulation of these and other problems continued

to bedevil education. The national policy on education framed in 1986

under the guidance of Rajiv Gandhi was a major initiative to deal with

such problems. It is interesting to note that this policy document identifies

the failures of the 1968 policy on education in the following statement:

“...the general formulations incorporated in the 1968 policy did not, however, get translated into a detailed strategy of implementation accompanied by the assignment of specific responsibilities and financial and organizational support. As a result, problems of access, quality, quantity, utility and financial outlay,

accumulated over the years have now assumed such massive

proportions that they must be tackled with the utmost urgency.”