Page 45 - EW August 2023

Dr. Kasturirangan (left) & Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan releasing NCFSE 2023: feedback appeal

assumption of leadership of the national education reform not obliged to read it in toto.
initiative. Therefore, we have spared him the burden of an “This NCF aims to be understandable and relatable to,
interview to explain the purposes and modalities of NCFSE and usable by, practitioners of education, including teach-
2023. ers and other educators, school leaders, and functionaries
Meanwhile, while formally releasing the ‘pre-draft’ of the education system such as project officers, cluster and
NCFSE 2023, the education ministry’s statement empha- block resource persons, block education officers, teacher
sised that it was made public to solicit feedback “from vari- educators, examination boards, and curriculum/syllabus/
ous stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, textbook development teams,” says the draft NCFSE pro-
teacher educators, experts, scholars and professionals”. logue. In short, this voluminous policy is for teacher train-
“While giving your feedback, it needs to be kept in view ers rather than for teachers themselves. The primary mes-
that this is a pre-draft of the NCFSE which still requires sage of NCFSE 2023 is that teachers need to be brought
several rounds of discussion within the National Steering up to speed if NEP 2020 is to be implemented successfully
Committee (NSC). Feedback from diverse stakeholders will because the “teacher is at the heart of the practice of edu-
further help NSC to look critically into different modalities cation”.
and approaches that this framework is proposing,” says the That teacher trainers rather than teachers themselves
ministry’s statement. This EducationWorld feature is being are the prime targets of NCF-FS and NCFSE is confirmed
presented to the ministry and public as feedback to NCFSE by Dr. Chetan Singhai, the highly-qualified (JNU,
2023. NIAS, Institute of Education, UCL, London and National
Although the voluminous pre-draft NCFSE is bereft Law School of India University) Chief Consultant, Tech-
of the customary foreword and summary, its purpose is nical Secretariat of the Union education ministry, which
made clear in the introduction. “The overarching objec- is overseeing the entire NCF (early years, school, teacher
tive of this NCF(SE) is to help in positively transforming and adult education) formulation process working in close
the school education system of India as envisioned in NEP consultation with Dr. Kasturirangan. “All four constitu-
2020 through corresponding positive changes in the cur- ent drafts of NCF 2023 have to be viewed as a continu-
riculum, including pedagogy,” says the introductory state- um primarily directed at teacher educators employed in
ment. And in anticipation of the initial shock reaction of 614 state-level DIETs (District Institutes of Education &
most educators confronted with the voluminous 684-page Training) and six Regional Institutes of Education (RIEs).
NCFSE pre-draft, the intro makes clear that teachers are Working in close cooperation with NCERT (the apex-level

AUGUST 2023 EDUCATIONWORLD 45