The draft calls for a secular, democratic and scientific education policy in contrast to what AISEC describes as the “communal, undemocratic anti-science, privatised and commercialised” structure of NEP 2020.
The AISEC approach paper stated that the Centre ignored the views of educationists, state governments and the wider public when finalising NEP 2020. (Photo by arrangement)
Hyderabad: The All India Save Education Committee (AISEC), Telangana Chapter, has announced the release of a draft People's Education Policy (PEP 2025) across state capitals, including Delhi on Thursday, May 22. This document is supposed to be an alternative to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and AISEC warned that the current framework is dismantling the public education system by centralising control over learning. According to the group, the new proposal is a corrective to what it sees as the undemocratic and top-down imposition of NEP 2020, which was adopted without parliamentary debate during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.
The AISEC approach paper stated that the Centre ignored the views of educationists, state governments and the wider public when finalising NEP 2020. "The central government has been forcibly imposing the policy on the states," the statement read, referring to the Supreme Court’s recent observation criticising the same. The AISEC is now collecting public feedback on the draft and plans to place the final version before a “National People’s Parliament” in Bengaluru in January 2026.
The draft calls for a secular, democratic and scientific education policy in contrast to what AISEC describes as the “communal, undemocratic anti-science, privatised and commercialised” structure of NEP 2020. One of the central demands is for education to be returned to the State List and for the Constitution to be amended accordingly. It also proposes that 10 per cent of the Central Budget and 20 to 25 percent of State Budgets be allocated to education.
PEP also advocates reinstating the 10+2 system instead of the 5+3+3+4 pattern introduced by NEP. It seeks to abolish the “no detention” policy, reintroduce the pass-fail system with remedial support and reverse the shift to a multidisciplinary approach in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Instead, it calls for discipline-specific curricula and a return to a two-year postgraduate model, along with the restoration of the MPhil programme.
The draft policy recommends annual examinations instead of the semester system and expresses opposition to centralised admission tests like NEET and CUCET. It also calls for permanent appointments for teachers rather than increasing reliance on guest or contractual staff. “Once the final draft of Alternative People’s Education Policy is ready, AISEC proposes to submit it to the Central and state governments and demand its implementation within a stipulated time frame,” said Prof P.L. Vishweshwar Rao, chairman of AISEC.
AISEC also raises objections to the perceived politicisation of curricula, distortion of history and science and forced vocationalisation of education under the NEP banner. It insists on treating vocational education as a separate stream and demands that research not be dictated by government or private funding agencies. AISEC also supports the autonomy of educational institutions and opposes what it describes as the graded and fake autonomy introduced by the NEP.
( Source : Deccan Chronicle )
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