Ensuring Quality Education: Holistic Child Development and the New Education Policy

The chapter evaluates India’s progress in providing quality education to her children. Progress in education related indicators is assessed in relation to SDG-4 targets. Indicators such as enrolment ratio, learning outcome, drop-out rates, pupil-teacher ratio, availability of qualified teachers, scholarship are used. While the national progress towards the education related targets is noteworthy, some of the states are distant from the stated targets in relation to important indicators. Achieving the education related SDG targets would require targeted intervention by states. Education policy has evolved globally with the initiatives such as education for all and millennium development goals in the 1990s. In India, the New Education Policy 2020 will assume great significance in furthering the achievement of SDG-4. In view of prevalence of child malnutrition, anthropometric failures, low per capita income, the implementation of New Education Policy needs to be done keeping in sight the development disparities across states. Combining the New Education Policy with nutrition and health policies would bring about holistic child development throughout the country. Education being a merit good, a fine balance between public and private provisioning would assume even greater significance in ensuring affordable, inclusive, and quality education at all levels in the years that follow.