Education infrastructure in India needs to adapt to a fast-changing curriculum

By Sarika Shetty

India has the world’s largest population of young people – people who will shape the future of our country. Therefore, consistently assessing and improving the quality of our education system and infrastructure is critical. The National Education Policy 2020 was a welcome measure – it seeks to revolutionise our outdated education system and make way for holistic learning through accessible, equitable, and inclusive programs. 

It recognises that the current education system’s focus on rote learning has resulted in a lack of critical thinking and vocational skills and seeks to remedy that through multiple measures. It proposes that curriculum and pedagogy be restructured to facilitate conceptual understanding and development of critical skill sets through experiential, interactive, and collaborative learning.

The policy also seeks to offer secondary students flexibility in choosing subjects according to their interests, helping them proactively lead their education. Apart from this, there is a much-needed focus on multilingual teaching and learning. Indian arts, culture, and languages are also integrated into the curriculum.

But this is just the first step. For effective implementation of this policy, our educational infrastructure will need to adapt accordingly. 

Holistic learning happens beyond the classroom

The commercialisation of educational institutions has at times shifted the focus away from the noble vision of nurturing creative, critical thinkers, and problem solvers. We then find that the quality of infrastructure gets neglected – classrooms act as silos restricting interaction between primary and secondary graders, and labs, libraries, and other facilities are designed as teacher-led spaces, relegating students to a passive role in their own education. 

Air-conditioned boxes create an artificial environment that cuts off students from the rest of the world, in turn limiting their creative thinking potential. There is little or no emphasis on transitional and congregational spaces where students can wander beyond the classrooms and initiate conversations and activities independently.

Students must be encouraged to interact with each other and their environment in order to learn from a wide range of sources beyond their textbooks. Interactions with their peers and teachers are also integral to them developing meaningful relationships and soft skills. Educational infrastructure can facilitate this by creating landscaped open and semi-open spaces of varying scales. 

Courtyards with flowering trees and nectar-sucking birds can be a colourful and engaging learning environment where students learn about the avian world, nesting seasons, and so much more. Terraces and balconies can become spots for discussions that extend after regular classes have ended. An amphitheatre can become the ground for internal debates and collaborative working. Blurring the boundaries between the classroom and outdoor natural spaces in educational campuses, visually and physically, can present multiple opportunities for the hands-on experiential learning that NEP stipulates.

With creative design thinking, it is possible to achieve these spaces even in dense urban environments. Built on a tight plot in Manhattan, American architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s design for a new medical centre for Columbia University is a great example. The architects have designed an interconnected staircase running through the entire building as a mix of study and social spaces. Well-lit informal study lounges, exterior terraces, and a multi-purpose auditorium stacked on top of each other in this “study cascade” create a conducive environment for students to pause for informal discussions and meetings.

With multiple state governments now allowing a greater FSI for educational institutions in urban areas, there is an increased potential for such mindful vertical developments in highly populated and space-starved Indian cities.

Comfort is key

Inside the classrooms, students need to feel physically comfortable in their learning environments to be fully engaged. From a design perspective, this entails the optimisation of natural light and ventilation in all spaces. It is important to note that human comfort is subjective – we don’t always need air-conditioned spaces at the standard 22-24 degrees Celsius; we can feel comfortable in temperatures much beyond that if we perceive the space as cooler than the outdoors. 

Various passive and active design strategies can be adopted based on the climatic context, such as optimising the site planning for mutual shading of buildings and providing screens or traditional “jaalis” to filter out the harsh sun while bringing in cool air in hot and dry climates. Planning academic spaces around a water body is another strategy that can be adopted in such climates. At once, this facilitates evaporative cooling during the hotter months and rainwater harvesting during monsoons.

The scale of learning spaces also plays an important role in ensuring students’ comfort. The spaces and furniture on the campus designed to cater to a specific age group ergonomically will ensure greater comfort for the students. This thinking should also extend into the design of spaces such as toilets, as primary graders would find it difficult to use toilets designed for secondary graders.

Integrating Indian art and culture

NEP’s focus on disseminating Indian art and culture can be strengthened through spatial design too. Commissioning local artisans and craftspersons to create murals, sculptures, and other objects to be integrated into educational institutions can help broaden awareness of our rich heritage of arts and crafts, while also creating local employment opportunities 

Safe and inclusive learning environment 

NEP recognises the need to create provisions for marginalised communities and children with special needs in the educational system. Inclusive design can help further this cause. 

Universally accessible schools and college campuses, i.e. environments designed to be easily accessed and independently used by all people regardless of their age, size, or disability, can encourage children with special needs to complete their education. The provision of shared facilities can help to foster equality and empathy. Well-lit spaces with supportive staff can help ensure safety. Beyond this, providing multifunctional spaces that can adapt to conventional teaching methods, technology-aided learning, and experiential, play-based learning can help ensure that students with learning disabilities can explore the modes best suited to them.

The National Education Policy is a much-needed reform in India. But to truly realise its vision requires a major shift in how we imagine our educational spaces and infrastructure too. Only when multiple stakeholders come together – school and college authorities, academic regulatory bodies, architects and planners, students and parents, etc. – can we create a modern, inclusive and effective education system fit for the holistic development of the future leaders of our country.  

The author is a partner at SJK Architects. Views are personal.