The Next Chapter for Education Ministry

Source: The Hindu

Introduction 

Pralhad Joshi, the new Union Minister for Education, took additional charge of the Ministry on July 26, inheriting a wide range of structural changes initiated by his predecessor, Dharmendra Pradhan. Mr. Pradhan's five-year tenure was marked by a sustained push to implement the NEP 2020, accepted by the Union Cabinet a year before he took charge. Earlier, at the Petroleum Ministry, he had built a reputation for delivery by providing eight crore LPG connections to poor households in three years against a four-year target. 

• Common threads ran through his reforms at Education: performance evaluation and accountability, education-skilling convergence, promotion of a particular vision of "Indianness," ambition undercut by implementation challenges, and a push for uniformity that critics call centralisation and a disregard for diversity. Almost all remain works-in-progress that the new Minister must now carry forward. 

Foundational Literacy 

• Nipun Bharat, launched in the wake of pandemic-era learning losses, seeks to ensure every child attains foundational literacy and numeracy by the end of Grade 3, targeted for 2026-27. 
• ASER 2024 showed a seven-percentage-point gain in numeracy since 2018, and PARAKH 2024 found Grade 3 students who benefited from the mission outperforming Grades 6 and 9 in language and math. 
• Yet fewer than a quarter of students nationally could read a Grade 2-level text, and Grade 5 levels remained roughly at pre-pandemic levels — gaps that may necessitate a "Nipun Bharat 2.0." 

Boosting Teaching Quality 

• The National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST) is India's first initiative to classify teachers as proficient, expert, or advanced against uniform standards, with career progression tied to this ladder — but it has not yet been rolled out. 
• The linked National Mentoring Mission, rolled out via online sessions, suffers from low awareness among the country's roughly one crore teachers and lacks formalised impact assessments. 

Changes in Higher Education 

• The 2025 draft UGC regulations on appointing teachers and Vice-Chancellors faced opposition, notably for giving Governors a decisive say in VC appointments and removing the cap on contractual professorships. 
• New UGC undergraduate/postgraduate rules promoting flexibility and multidisciplinarity are formally in force, but State university institutions are still grasping concepts like cross-disciplinary study and credit transfer via the National Credit Framework. 
• The Swayam Plus platform (500+ industry courses, 6.5 lakh registrations, plus new "AI for All" modules) exemplifies education-skilling convergence, but funding for State universities remains negligible, and the VBSA lacks the grant-giving function central to the UGC it seeks to replace. 

Language Policy Controversy 

• Mr. Pradhan pushed to steamroll NEP adoption — particularly the three-language policy — by tying central funding for primary education schemes to State compliance. 
• Tamil Nadu remains a holdout, though West Bengal's new government has accepted it. 
• CBSE schools were mandated to teach two "Bharatiya" languages from Classes 6–12, prioritising Indian languages over English, even though NEP itself also emphasises English and foreign-language learning. 

Conclusion 

Pralhad Joshi takes charge at a stage where the NEP's most ambitious reforms — from foundational literacy to higher-education restructuring and the contested three-language policy — remain incomplete. Persistent funding gaps, low implementation awareness, and unresolved Centre-State tensions mean the new Minister inherits an open agenda rather than a finished one.