Transition from Sectors of Adult Education to Systems of Lifelong Learning in India’s context

Abstract

This paper highlights the process of transition taking place from sectors of adult education into the systems of Lifelong Learning under the influence of various international organizations especially in the context of the European policies documents. It clearly shows how the Indian educational policy has undergone a revolutionary change by adopting the different components of Adult and lifelong learning in different periods. Through adequate literature review, it provides the space for developing some research questions, and further, those questions are answered by interpreting the relevant references through national policies from the Kothari Commission (1964-66) to NEP (2020). Since Kothari Commission is one of the major documents that has talked a lot about Lifelong learning and it has also suggested the inclusion of education with the concept of “Education for All”. However, we see that this concept of “Education for all” prevails till the New Education Policy (2020). The paper critically analyses the financial model of Indian Education to implement the concept of “Education for All” under the lens of the three established models (1) the Emancipatory /Social justice model (2) the Human capital model and (3) the Mixed state market model. Last but not the least, Since the paper is developed to do a comparative study, it successfully develops many such angles to make those comparisons to be done.