National Education Policy (NEP) - What India can learn from Suzhi Jiaoyu - China's 20+ years of attempts at educational reform.
Indian and Chinese education system
Similarities
- Both countries have a concept of free and compulsory education. China has 9 years of free and compulsory education while India under NEP has proposed 14 years of free and compulsory education.
- Both countries have high stakes exams that can determine their entire life’s trajectory. While India has different types of exams specific to jobs and colleges like IAS, PSU, JEE, NEET etc, China has the Gaokao which is the college entrance exam that the Chinese students have to take.
- Exam oriented teaching practices are very common in both countries.
- Both countries have huge income disparities and therefore have a mix of public and private schools.
- Both countries have a culture of “coaching centers” or “cram schools” that help prepare students for the exam.
NEP
The NEP was introduced by the government of India in 2020 and it is the National Education Policy of India. It aims to reform the entire education system with specific objectives laid out. The NEP aims to change the school system to 5 + 3 + 3 + 4 from the current 10+2. It aims to increase the higher education enrollment rate to 50% from the current 26%. It also envisions a multidisciplinary environment for students and introduces skill-based learning.
Suzhi Jiaoyu
Suzhi Jiaoyu has been China’s attempt at reforming the education system. It has a long history and several parallels with the state of education in India. Suzhi translates to something like “human quality” and Suzhi Jiaoyu roughly translates to “quality education”. The term has widespread popular support and has been used by the government to promote education reforms since the 1990s. In the sections that follow, we will look at some key lessons from China’s attempts at reforming the education system and put them in the modern context.
Suzhi Jiaoyu is often used as an umbrella term to refer to any number of educational goals that resonate with the people. It may include all round development, physical education, nationalistic education, inculcation of cultural values, etc. This is surprisingly similar to NEP in spirit. The NEP also lays out an ambitious and grand vision for reforming the education system.
Lessons from Suzhi Jiaoyu
Lesson 1: Parents going against government reform: Law implementation and Prisoner’s Dilemma
The Chinese government has tried various types of reforms at different times to get out of the culture of exam oriented preparation. Parents don’t always welcome these changes. Here are some examples
i) Parents give permission to teachers to cut back on extracurricular as well as sleeping time so that children can focus on Gaokao. Any Government policy that mandates the allocation of certain number of hours to co-curricular or extra-curricular activity doesn’t get implemented in the right spirit.
ii) If schools lower the work load, parents go out and find extra material like worksheets, books or advanced classes from the market.
iii) If government comes up with a policy to ensure equality parents can also use money and influence to make sure they get to send their kids to “best schools”. The criteria of best is often determined by results in the high stakes exam.
Overall, parents tend to behave in a highly competitive manner which is detrimental to the long term growth and development of the child and the nation/society. The fear that their child will get left behind makes them undermine the law. Such prioritization of short term goals is driven by a need for security and the very high dependence on Gaokao for a secure and bright future.
Lesson 2: Curricular reforms are a double-edged sword:
Often times, the first thing that governments change in order to improve the education system is the curriculum. But curricular reforms are not easy to implement. Curricular reforms require much more than printing the right books. I list the key learnings below:
i) Implementation of curricular reforms requires training.
ii) Teachers (and parents) are not always on-board with curricular reforms so they never get implemented properly. Teachers who are a product of the existing system have beliefs that are hard to change. They are likely to agree with a need for improvement but when real improvements are suggested they might be reluctant to adopt them in the right spirit. Real changes require doing things that go against intuition. The same is true for parents. Parents can also oppose curricular reforms for similar reasons. New ideas go against gut feeling.
iii) Curricular reforms may also demand an increase in budgetary allocations.
iv) Equity issues: In China, a memorization based curriculum favored the rural students who don’t have access to quality teachers. Rural students can spend long hours on studies and hard work compared to the urban counterpart. At the same time, a modern curriculum favors the urban students who have quality teachers and higher funds for education. This issue can be best exemplified by the tragic story of S.Anitha from Tamil Nadu. She had scored 1176/1200 in the state board exam but scored very low in the NEET UG exam in 2017. She committed suicide most likely out of feelings of hopelessness.
Because of these challenges, curricular reforms never really produce the intended results.
Lesson 3: Quality of western education practices comes from adhering to the right set of values.
Most reforms in developing nations like India, China try to emulate the western system in order to achieve similar levels of scientific, technological and economic success. However what truly matters is the inculcation of values that produce such behavior. Copying curriculum from the west doesn’t matter if students don’t have the freedom to express themselves. The way a teacher interacts with the students and implements the curriculum will be driven by the values of the institute, society or culture. Those values should also align with the west in order to produce outcomes similar to the west.
Lesson 4: Reforms require appropriate budgetary allocation.
Apart from the cost of implementing new curriculum, reforms also consist of costs related to other changes like setting up infrastructure, cost of compliance, cost of administration etc. Without appropriate budgetary allocation or clarity about cost sharing, the implementation of reforms can encounter significant setbacks. Lack of clarity on budget allocation and sharing can lead to complications as evidenced by the recent judgement by Madras High court on funds disbursal. Regardless of who is right or wrong, such issues can lead to implementation issues. A few weeks ago Comedian and Youtuber Kunal Kamra released a video discussing Education industry as well as NEP where the guest talks about administrative challenges related to implementation of NEP. You can find the video here.
Conclusion:
We need to ask ourselves whether we can truly blame the government when a policy fails.
We also need to understand the multi-faceted nature of the problem and how there are multiple points of failure because of multiple decision makers and differing values. And finally we need to ask ourselves whether education reforms will ever work if they are not simultaneously supported by economic reforms? If the need for security is driving the behavior of parents and students and if education is a service driven by market forces then the need for security will always prioritize short term goals over long term goals.
The era in which China implemented Suzhi jiyao didn’t have AI. The modern economy has its own issues that every education system new or old will have to tackle. Can AI change the importance of high stakes exams and help create a more flexible and adaptive world remains to be seen.
References:
Dello-Iacovo, B. (2009). Curriculum reform and ‘quality education’ in China: An overview. International journal of educational development, 29(3), 241-249.
NEP funds disbursal - https://www.livelaw.in/high-court/madras-high-court/funds-payable-by- centre-to-states-under-rte-act-need-not-be-linked-to-nep-implementation-madras-high-court- 294648
Youtube video by Kunal Kamra: Education is a business https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c79mw_82VVo
Guo, L., Huang, J., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Education development in China: Education return, quality, and equity. Sustainability, 11(13), 3750.
Story of S_Anitha - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_S._Anitha