National Curricular Framework 2023: How can we move from policy rhetoric to classroom reform?

By Siamack Zahedi

The National Curricular Framework (NCF) 2023 is arguably the most comprehensive educational reform statement published by our government to date. It presents articulate learning standards for each subject and grade level, prescriptions for how textbooks and curricular resources should be designed, and recommendations for how essential supports at the school level should be structured, among many other matters. It successfully bridges traditional wisdom with ideas from modern philosophy and research around the world on topics related to the priorities of education, diversity and inclusion, and assumptions about how children learn and consequently what good teaching looks like. Overall, it presents a theoretically and scientifically sound set of ideals for reform geared at empowering students to be successful global citizens in the 21st century.

The NCF 2023 is one of 10 documents in the works by the National Centre for Educational Research and Training, and it will influence the formation of additional supplementary policies such as the National Professional Standards for Teachers and the National Curricular Framework for Teacher Education. This series of reform statements together attempt to lay out a blueprint for realising the audacious vision of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 for “India to have an education system by 2040 that is second to none”?

How novel are the recommendations of the NEP and NCF?

While transformative ideas like those presented in the NEP 2020 and NCF 2023 give us an inspiring and hopeful vision for the future, so did the earliest versions of these documents. For example, the NEP in 1968 recommended reforms on how examinations were designed and implemented, suggesting that the reliability and validity of examinations must be improved, and the focus should be on improving student learning instead of merely ‘certifying’ performance through tests. Reliability, validity, and designing assessments to promote learning are key tenets of a scientific assessment system. The NCF had it spot-on in the ‘60s! Seven years later, the NCF in 1975 reiterated these recommendations, adding that assessments were still forcing students “…to cram a large mass of half-digested information in a short time and thereafter forget it conveniently”. The same message was repeated in the NCF 1988, NCF 2000, and even the NCF 2005 which asserted that the board exams “…negatively influence all testing and assessment throughout the school years”.

One might expect 40 years’ worth of reminders to be sufficient to bring about change in this one area. Clearly not! The NCF in 2023 once again expressed concern that, “The examinations most often focus on the capacity of students to reproduce learnt facts and little else… most examinations largely test rote memory… this gives an incomplete (at best) or incorrect (at worst) picture of student learning…it is the responsibility of Boards of Examination to design and implement fair, reliable and valid testing processes”. Today, if you are a student, parent, or even grandparent, you have first-hand experience with what is wrong with these examinations. Because they haven’t changed fundamentally for the past 60 years!

Board examinations are just one example of several school-quality related factors that have been repeatedly addressed in policy over the decades without successful translation into classroom practice. Other examples include the large volume and inflexibility of the syllabus, low autonomy and discretion provided to teachers to adjust and modify the curriculum as needed, the predominance of teacher-directed pedagogy instead of student-centered practices, and the narrow academic-focus of the syllabus ignoring other critical dimensions for holistic development. These are themes that the NEP and NCF brought to our notice right from the ‘60s. They are not new ideas. We have always known that in order to establish a high-quality, world-class schooling system, these key issues must be addressed.

What will it take to bring about change?

Policy rhetoric on its own cannot bring about transformation. Change requires all key drivers of the schooling ecosystem to align and synchronize actions around the reform agenda. These include macro level drivers such as politics, economics, and culture, meso level drivers such as policy and teacher education institutions, and micro level drivers such as school leaders, teachers, and parents. If only one driver aligns itself with the reform agenda – for example, policy – then it will swim against the tide and not get far. Instead, we will see a chasm developing slowly between policy rhetoric and actual reform at the classroom level. And this is in fact precisely what we have been experiencing in Indian schooling for decades.

How can we support the reform agenda as individuals?

While influencing macro and meso level drivers might be out of our sphere of control as individuals, we do have the capability and responsibility to be protagonists of change within the school microsystems we operate in – as teachers, parents, and school leaders. As teachers and leaders, we can restructure our school time tables to reflect a more holistic educational program that places due emphasis on academic but also non-academic capabilities like socio-emotional learning, personal leadership, and citizenship – at least up until board examinations dominate the entire schooling engagement from grade 9 onwards.

As parents, we can encourage and support such changes. We can also structure after-school activities to be more balanced – making room for sports and artistic endeavors and not just private tuition for academics. As teachers, we can take some initiative and even risks deviating from textbooks and prescribed syllabi to more engaging media and responsive practices based on student interest and learning. We can entrust students a little more as drivers of their learning journeys and move away from teacher-directed practices to instead more student-centered activities that might be messy at times and put us as adults less in control of the instructional process. As leaders and parents, we can provide teachers with some space to try new ideas and innovate. We can empower them to make decisions over modifying the syllabus and pedagogy based on their understanding of the unique student profiles in their class. As leaders we can create a school culture that promotes autonomy and agency in teachers and students, encourages them to take risks, and provides parents with a voice and opportunity to actively participate in the educational journeys of students. But such shifts at the school and classroom level require trust.