THE 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) condemns the attacks launched on the education system by the present BJP dispensation. The pace of privatisation and commercialisation of education, an integral part of neoliberal policies, increased after the BJP came to power.  The intention is to withdraw the State from education and let private corporates occupy that space. These policies are a direct attack on quantity, quality and equity in education.

During the pandemic, closure of educational institutions, sudden push towards online learning added to the distress. In education sector, the concept of equitable access to education started crumbling. The central government misused the pandemic to undemocratically push through the New National Education Policy-2020, which paves the way for centralisation, commercialisation, and communalisation of education. It also gave emphasis to teaching methods other than the existing, regular and classroom teaching. Instead of ensuring healthy student-teacher ratios, adequate teaching posts based on workload and expansion based on increased enrollment, the education ministry has recently decided to allow colleges and universities to offer up to 40 per cent of the courses online. This provision completely undermines academic quality. The government has used every opportunity in the pandemic to pursue such exclusionary system of education. The widening digital divide also has affected students coming from marginalised socio-economic groups.

Gender divide is also huge within India, and girl students are the worst sufferers during the pandemic as issues of early marriage, trafficking, domestic violence and drop out have increased manifold. Mental health problems and suicide rates among students have increased.

Today, the BJP’s project is to scrap public universities, in order to bring in private controlled educational institutes supported by corporate dictates. To withdraw from the existing system and establish a new structure to facilitate it, government has created the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) aimed at replacing University Grants Commission (UGC) and regulatory bodies such as All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) in a tearing hurry. This implies a greater role for the bureaucracy. The Modi government has also replaced grants to public universities with infrastructure loans via the Higher Education Finance Agency (HEFA), a move towards privatisation.

The introduction of Four Year UG programme (FYUP) replicating American model creates a rigid three-tier system, providing multiple exit points. It is unfairly loaded against the marginalised students. These steps will completely destabilise higher education.

The recent appointments made in several universities also have been of growing concern. It has become abundantly clear that Hindutva right-wing political views are sufficient qualification for such appointments as per the BJP-RSS dispensation. Similarly, appointments of vice chancellors in the central universities also show that BJP-RSS is committed to destroy the educational institutions. 

Accessible public school education in the country is under serious threat. This can be seen starkly in the case of the ‘mid day meal scheme’ which has been subject to systemic undermining and destruction. The privatisation of school education is also sought to be furthered by the State in its attempt to take forward the PPP model of education. Also, closure of schools and affiliating colleges pave the way for further privatisation and reduced access especially for rural and other disadvantaged sections.

NEP takes centralisation to extremes, with examinations for admissions to college/university, setting of the National Curriculum Framework, approval of research projects, teacher-training exams and many other aspects being conducted by central agencies completely by-passing the states. Already we observed that students from rural areas and poor economic background and those educated in state government schools have been the worst affected after the introduction of NEET.

The central universities funded by the University Grants Commission (UGC) are forced to go for a common entrance test, CUCET which will promote private coaching and attack school-education and state boards.

The teaching fraternity witnesses a decline of permanent teachers and rise in contractual teachers and non-teaching employees in many forms. One-time absorption of ad hoc/temporary/contract employees to bring justice to thousands of teachers who have served the units but denied the chance of becoming permanent is imperative. 

Under the BJP government, education sector is also seeing increasing communalisation in the educational structure. The direction of the CBSE to NCERT to delete chapters and portions from different text books on citizenship, nationalism, secularism, federalism, articles of progressive writers is meant to destroy the rational, secular, democratic content of the school texts. This must be seen in relation with the ongoing projects of RSS-BJP to communalise the curriculum by distorting actual history and deleting constitutional values. 

The 23rd Congress of the CPI(M) calls upon wider sections of the society who cherish education as an instrument of development, liberation and equality, to mobilise for fighting back this severe attack on education.