”Stop blaming Macaulay for all that’s wrong with education”, says Sisodia

Sep 7, 2020
New Delhi: Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia on Monday demaned that the Centre should bring in a law for spending six per cent of GDP on education, rather than blaming Mcaulay for all things that go wrong in education.

“We should stop blaming Macaulay now, rather we should introspect on what was done with the last two education policies”, Sisodia said in his remarks at a video conference on “National Education Policy 2020 in transforming higher education”. The conference had been organised by the Union Ministry of Education, and chaired by President Ramnath Kovind.

“In the year 1968 and 1986, new education policies were formulated. Macaulay is used as an excuse to hide the failures in the implementation of those policies. Macaulay did not stop us from implementing our own education policy since independence.” Mr. Sisodia said, “Today, we should take a pledge that no one will ever take Macaulay’s name to hide his shortcomings,” he said.

Pointing out that every hour a student commits suicide, tSisodia called for an end to the pressure of examination-oriented education .

”Even after 20 years of education, 80% of our students are not considered employable; this system needs to change. If we truly want vocational course to be treated with dignity then bachelor’s in Vocational subjects should be treated at par with bachelor’s in any other subject,” the Delhi Chief Minister said, adding that detailed action plan and commitment to resources were key to effective implementation of the new national education policy.

He said transformation in education cannot take place only by wishful thinking, a concrete action plan is the need of the hour.

“It is necessary to put national education policy into practice rather than restricting it to only wishful thinking. This policy talks about spending 6 percent of GDP on education. It has been said in 1968 policy as well but never implemented. Thus, a law should be made so that successive governments are bound by it and necessary resources needed for effective implementation of the policy can be guaranteed.” he said.