Learning Without Burden-1993 & Yashpal Committee 1992-93 

Back to: Contemporary India and Education – Unit 3

Dr. Yashpal presented a report titled ‘Learning without burden’ in 1993. The main aim of this committee was to recommend effective ways and means that can be used to reduce the load on school students at all levels. It mainly aimed to reduce this load of young students and sought to improve the quality of learning with the inclusion of the capability of life-long self-learning and skill formulation. Dr. Yashpal was the chairman of the Committee. He was a renowned academic, education reformer, and physicist.

Recommendations of the Yashpal Committee

The main recommendations of the Yashpal Committee (1992-93) were as follows:

  1. The Final Report that was submitted by the committee to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) recommended the abandonment of the deemed university status.
  2. It recommended that all the worthy deemed universities should be transformed into full-fledged universities or must be abandoned.
  3. The report recommended the conduction of a test similar to GRE for university education.
  4. The replacement of bodies like NCTE, AICTE, UGC d by a Commission for Higher Education and Research (CHER) – a seven-member body was also recommended.
  5. It recommended that the new regulatory bodies must be independent of political pressures.
  6. It recommended the chairperson’s position of CHER was to parallel the election commissioners.
  7. It recommended that the jurisdiction of regulators such as the Bar Council of India, the Medical Council of India, etc. must be limited to administrative matters and universities must be responsible for all academic matters.
  8. The report recommended that IITs and IIMs must be expanded as full-fledged universities and encourage the inclusion of diversity more.

The Committee made the following recommendations for learning without a burden:

  1. Decentralization of the framing procedure of the curriculum and writing of textbooks and involvement of more teachers.
  2. Establishment of education committees at the village, block, and district levels.
  3. Restriction of the jurisdiction of CBSE to KVS and the Navodaya Vidyalayas only.
  4. Affiliation of all other schools should be with the respective state boards.
  5. Exclusion of interview tests and interviews for nursery admissions.
  6. Elimination of commercialization.
  7. Elimination of compulsion for school children to carry heavy books to school.
  8. Exclusion of homework for primary school children.
  9. Reduction of the teacher-pupil ratio to at least 1:30.
  10. Increases use of electronic media.
  11. Improvement of teacher training.

The “Learning without Burden” report is now regarded as a significant document that has shaped the modern Indian education system.