Calling Off Play

Context: In the name of efficiency and optimisation, National Education Policy-2020 (NEP) disregards children’s right to playgrounds.

NEP-2020 provisions on playgrounds in schools:

• Made playground optional (for both public and private schools): to “ease” school operation by removing Right To Education (RTE)’s playground requirements.
• Rationalised schools: It proposes states (by 2025) to create school complexes (with one secondary school and other lower-grade schools in a 5-10 km radius) (to encourage sharing resources such as playgrounds).

Implications of the provisions

• Abdication of legal obligation: as RTE Act 2009 mandates that all schools provide the essential infrastructural standards specified in the RTE Schedule, including playgrounds.
• Impact of rationalisation on the varied need of children: For instance, Anganwadi learners have different spatial needs than middle school students.
• Ignores judicial direction: Allahabad High Court ruled that playgrounds must be provided to ensure barrier-free, “run-in” access for all children, including children with disabilities.
• Contradicts NEP’s own provision of ensuring sports-integrated education; fails to explain how sports may be integrated if schools are not required to provide playgrounds.
  • While Sports act as a sub-category of child’s play, it is not as paramount as play since it is adult-designed, competitive, often gendered and ableist, and accommodates only a few.
• Abdicates international obligations: as the ‘UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989’ recognises the indispensable and inherent value of play by recognising it as a right of children.
  • The NEP recognises children’s play only when it serves teachers in imparting learning.

Conclusion: Thus, the NEP’s assault on playgrounds deprives children, particularly those belonging to lower castes and the urban poor, of their right to play in safe and adequate spaces.