The National Education
Policy (NEP) 2020 holds significant importance because of its comprehensive
approach to addressing the unfinished agenda of previous education policies,
particularly the National Policy on Education 1986--1992. While previous
policies focused on issues of access and equity, the NEP 2020 expanded its
scope to encompass principles aimed at nurturing holistic development and
ethical values in students. By emphasizing the development of good human beings
capable of rational thought, compassion, resilience, and ethical values, the
NEP 2020 aligns with the broader vision outlined in the Constitution of India
for building an equitable, inclusive, and plural society.
Moreover, the NEP 2020 places emphasis on creating
inclusive and welcoming educational institutions that provide a safe and
stimulating learning environment for all students. It recognizes the importance
of offering a wide range of learning experiences and ensuring access to
appropriate resources and infrastructure. This approach reflects a commitment
to fostering the holistic development of students and ensuring their
well-being. Furthermore, the NEP 2020 underscores the importance of seamless
integration and coordination across institutions and education stages. By
promoting collaboration and coordination, the policy aims to create a cohesive
and interconnected education system that facilitates smooth transitions and
enhances overall educational outcomes.
In summary, the significance of the NEP 2020 lies in
its holistic approach to education, which not only addresses issues of access
and equity but also prioritizes the development of ethical values, holistic
development, and inclusive learning environments. Through its principles and
objectives, the NEP 2020 seeks to lay the foundation for a transformative
education system that empowers individuals and contributes to the development
of a just and inclusive society.
Potential Benefits and
Concerns
The new education policy
can improve the quality of education by promoting critical thinking,
creativity, and employability skills, and enhancing learning outcomes. It
emphasizes flexibility in curricula and assessments, which can cater to the
diverse needs of learners. However, there are concerns regarding the
implementation of the policy, resource allocation, and the need for capacity
building among teachers and educational institutions.
Main Features and
Objectives of NEP 2020
Reforms in School
Education
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 introduced
significant reforms to ensure universal access to education, emphasizing early
years' importance and multilingualism. It replaces the 10+2 structure with a
more age-appropriate 5+3+3+4 curriculum and establishes a National Assessment
Centre for monitoring learning outcomes. It prioritizes equitable and inclusive
education, targeting socially and economically disadvantaged groups, including
marginalized communities and children with disabilities. The policy aims to
create a more inclusive and accessible educational system, ensuring that every
child has the opportunity to learn and excel, regardless of their background or
circumstances.
Teacher Recruitment and Career
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has led
to significant reforms in teacher recruitment and career progression,
emphasizing transparent processes and merit-based promotions. It introduces the
National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST) to guide teacher
development and performance evaluation.
School Governance
School governance will be strengthened through
the establishment of school complexes/clusters to ensure resource availability
and foster a professional teacher community. Standard- setting and accreditation
for schools are overseen by separate bodies, promoting transparency and
accountability.
Vocational Education and Internship Opportunities
NEP 2020 prioritizes vocational education
integration, aiming for at least 50% of learners to be exposed by 2025 and
providing internship opportunities and online courses to enhance skill
development. These measures collectively aim to improve educational quality and
inclusivity, preparing students for diverse career pathways and contributing to
national development.
Holistic and Multidisciplinary Education
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
outlines ambitious goals for higher education, aiming to increase the gross
enrollment ratio (GER) to 50% by 2035. Emphasizing holistic multidisciplinary
education, the policy advocates for undergraduate programs that integrate
science, arts, humanities, mathematics, and professional fields.
Multiple Entry and Exit Programs
Undergraduate degrees are 3- or 4-year long,
with multiple exit options and appropriate certifications along the way. The
establishment of model public universities known as multidisciplinary education
and research universities (MERUs) will prioritize multidisciplinary education
across India.
Comprehensive Evaluation
To enhance learning environments, institutions
have the autonomy to innovate in curricula, pedagogies, and assessments, moving
toward criterion-based grading and comprehensive evaluation.
Support Centers for Underrepresented Groups
Support centers and resources will be provided
to aid students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, including
professional academic and career counseling, ensuring their holistic well-being
and success in higher education. Financial support initiatives will incentivize
merit among students from marginalized backgrounds, with expanded scholarships
and free ships.
Research and Knowledge Hubs
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
proposes a rationalized institutional architecture for higher education,
envisioning large, well-resourced, multidisciplinary institutions. Higher education
institutions (HEIs) will transform into vibrant universities, colleges, and HEI
clusters/ knowledge hubs, each with 3,000 or more students, offering
undergraduate and graduate programs with a focus on teaching, research, and
community engagement. Affiliation systems will be phased out over 15 years,
with colleges gradually gaining graded autonomy through transparent
accreditation processes. The establishment of a National Research Foundation
(NRF) aims to catalyze research and innovation nationwide, fostering a research
culture and providing funding across disciplines.
Promotion of Open and Distance Learning
Open and distance learning will be expanded to
increase the gross enrollment ratio, utilizing online courses, digital
repositories, and credit-based recognition of MOOCs to ensure quality on par
with in-class programs.
Internationalization of Education
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
emphasizes the internationalization of education through institutional collaboration
and facilitates student and faculty mobility. It also allows top-ranked
international universities to establish campuses in India.
Effective Governance
Effective governance and leadership in higher
education institutions (HEIs) will be achieved through graded accreditation and
autonomy over 15 years, fostering a culture of innovation and excellence. HEIs
have independent governance structures with boards of governors, led by
individuals with high academic qualifications and demonstrated leadership
capabilities, ensuring institutional autonomy and quality. The National
Education Policy (NEP) 2020 proposes a streamlined regulatory framework for
higher education, with the establishment of the Higher Education Commission of
India (HECI) overseeing standard-setting, funding, accreditation, and
regulation through independent bodies.
In teacher education, the NEP advocates for
integrated Bachelor of Education programs and stringent action against
substandard Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs). A National Mission for
Mentoring will be established to provide professional support to
university/college teachers. Professional education will be integrated into the
higher education system, with technical, health science, legal, and
agricultural universities aiming for multidisciplinary purposes.
Promoting Literacy
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
sets ambitious goals for adult education, aiming to achieve 100% youth and
adult literacy by 2030. In terms of financing education, the NEP emphasizes
education as a public service and combats commercialization through mechanisms
with checks and balances. Public investment in the education sector is targeted
to reach 6% of GDP, with the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE)
strengthened to ensure coordination and focus on quality education. The
ministry responsible for education redesigned as the Ministry of Education
(MoE) to emphasize its primary focus on education and learning. These measures
underscore the NEP's commitment to promoting literacy, preserving linguistic
diversity, and ensuring that quality education is accessible to all.
Challenges that will determining the success of
NEP 2020
The vision is aspirational. If this promotes
employment creation and education for everyone, it will depend on the
implementation schedule and level of rigour. Over the next few years, the
Government of India appears committed to implementing the vision in terms of
curriculum change, teacher training, and equipping schools for ICT-enabled and
assessment-driven evaluation. This is critical for India to truly reap the demographic
dividend through reskilling, vocational training, and job creation. The
objective is noble, and the policy is timely. However, the success and pace of
execution will depend on how these opportunities are successfully realized, as
the government can scale key challenges.
Access and Equity:
According to the All-India Survey on Higher
Education (AISHE) 2019–20, the gross enrollment ratio (GER) in higher education
for the18–23 age group in India was 27.1%, indicating disparities in access.
Quality of Education:
The National Institutional Ranking Framework
(NIRF) rankings showcase disparities, with only a few Indian institutions
consistently ranking high globally, highlighting variations in quality.
Outdated Curriculum:
A 2018 report by the University Grants
Commission (UGC) highlighted the need for curriculum revision in many
universities to align with industry requirements. The NEP calls for curriculum
and pedagogical changes. The boards that conduct examinations need to rethink
how they assess students and what the learning content rubric should be. School
textbooks will need to change too.
Faculty Shortage and Quality:
According to the AISHE report from 2021, there
was a reported faculty shortage of approximately 35% in higher education
institutions, impacting the student-to-faculty ratio and overall teaching
quality. It is one of the low-paid professions in India, with an average number
of teachers reaching approximately Rs 200,000 per year. Given these constraints,
experiential learning, and concept-oriented teaching, rather than the currently
prevalent printed content-oriented teaching, will be difficult. A comprehensive
National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education has also been announced in
the NEP in addition to Teacher Eligibility Tests (TETs) to create a talented
and curated pool of educators who can provide quality education to the
students. However, the current pool of educators needs to be oriented toward
these teaching techniques. Until the structural constraints on teacher salary salaries
are corrected in the education ecosystem, the NEP implementation in spirit and
form will remain challenging.
Research and Innovation:
Among 132 economies,
India ranks 46th in the
Global Innovation Index 2021 indicating a need for improvement in research and
innovation.
Infrastructure and Evaluation Facilities:
The 2019 AISHE report specifies variations in
infrastructure, with some institutions lacking essential facilities such as
libraries, laboratories, and modern classrooms. To assist students in
making the best choices for their futures, exams are encouraged to change to a
culture of assessment with ongoing tracking of learning outcomes, an emphasis
on foundational and higher-order abilities, and progress tracking powered by AI
software. To implement continuous assessment, educators and educational
institutions must develop novel assessment strategies and tasks that provoke
critical thinking and demand hard work from their students. Compared with
theory-based examinations which have unilateral questions and answers that are
easier to administer and score, holistic assessments would require educational
boards and institutions to invest significantly in creating these assessments
and practice assignments.
Funding Challenges:
The Economic Survey 2020-21 acknowledges the
financial constraints faced by higher education institutions, which impact
their ability to invest in infrastructure and faculty development. According
to the National Education Policy 2020, education spending will increase from
4.6% to 6% of GDP annually, or over INR 2.5 lakh crores. This money will be
wisely used to establish educational institutions around the nation, hire
instructors and professors, and pay for running costs such as feeding
schoolchildren for free. The policy's implementation coincides with the economy
being severely impacted by lockdowns connected to COVID-19, severely low
government tax revenues, and a significant budget imbalance that existed even
before COVID-19.
Regulatory Issues:
Complex regulatory processes were highlighted in
the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which highlights the need for
regulatory reforms to promote autonomy and reduce bureaucratic hurdles.
Technology Integration:
The Digital Education in India (2020) report
highlights disparities in digital infrastructure and internet accessibility
that hinder the seamless integration of technology in education. A digital
infrastructure of similar scale requires digital classrooms, teaching models
driven by remote expertise, AR/VR tools to bridge the gap in physical education
and laboratory setups, and uniform assessment in schools even in remote
villages, which will be expensive and take time to achieve the target.
Social and Cultural Factors:
According to data from AISHE, there are
disparities in gender and social category enrollment in higher education,
reflecting societal and cultural influences on educational choices. One of the
key highlights of NEP 2020 is the choice to make the mother tongue or regional
language the medium of instruction up to Class 5. While this may have a
long-term impact on nation-building, it also ensures the transition from the
mother tongue or regional language to the foreign language and helps inculcate
human values and emotions and stay connected to their own social and cultural
fabric (Narayan, 2020). However, implementing this policy seems to be a
challenge, as India is a nation of several languages, with approximately 270
mothers’ tongues as per Census 2011, and classrooms might have children with
more than one spoken language (Singh, 2020). Nevertheless, observers argue that
imposing the Hindi language on regional states, specifically southern states,
would achieve nothing for policymakers other than English and the mother
tongue. According to the India Skill Report by CII and Wheebox, English is
among the top 3 skills that employers look for, and the three southern states
of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana attract IT companies and contribute to
IT exports, as they constitute a large percentage of the English-speaking
population, among other factors (Singh, 2020). Furthermore, the intervention
will require the hiring of teachers and high-quality learning resources in many
different languages, which will be challenging to develop.
Internationalization:
The number of foreign students enrolled in
Indian higher education institutions is relatively low. Encouraging
international collaboration is emphasized in policies such as the NEP 2020.
Employability and Skill Gap:
Reports by various industry bodies advocate that
a significant percentage of graduates in India are not job-ready, pointing to a
gap between academic education and industry requirements. The policy calls for
a comprehensive structural revision of the curriculum in schools, which is a
positive development. However, we need teachers who are educated about pedagogical
requirements to offer this curriculum effectively. Parents and teachers
alike must adopt new perspectives on many curriculum modifications. It is not
an easy effort to have "exceptions" across the entire higher
education system—professors who are experts in one field but also curious
about, respectful of, and willing to lean into other fields. Over the next 15
to 20 years, the entire ecosystem of higher education will need to undergo a
cultural revolution to achieve this.
Recommendations and
Future Outlook
Areas
of Improvement
To improve the efficiency
of the new education policy, early childhood education, teacher training, and capacity
building should receive attention. It is also critical to strengthen
infrastructure, ensure equitable access, and monitor the quality of education.
Implementation and
Monitoring
To ensure the successful
implementation of the policy related to the NEP 2020, it is important to establish
a reliable monitoring mechanism. Regular assessments and evaluations should be
conducted at all levels, including the national and grassroots levels, to keep
track of the implementation progress. It is highly recommended that a dedicated
agency responsible for overseeing the policy execution effectively be
established.
Infrastructure
development
Having adequate
infrastructure is crucial for the successful implementation of the NEP 2020.
Therefore, the government should invest in the development of schools,
colleges, and universities to ensure that they have the necessary facilities
and resources. This includes providing classrooms equipped with technology,
libraries, laboratories, and sports facilities. Having adequate infrastructure
is crucial for the successful implementation of the NEP 2020. Therefore, the
government should invest in the development of schools, colleges, and
universities to ensure that they have the necessary facilities and resources.
This includes providing classrooms equipped with technology, libraries,
laboratories, and sports facilities.
Teacher training and Professional
development
Continuous training
programs including innovative teaching methods, ICT integration, and assessment
techniques should be conducted to
enhance the pedagogical skills of teachers.
Technology Integration
The policy acknowledges
the importance of technology in education and emphasizes the need to integrate
it into classrooms effectively. To harness its potential, several measures
should be taken, such as providing digital devices, high-speed internet
connectivity, and quality digital content. Moreover, teachers should receive
special training to utilize technology for teaching and learning efficiently.
Vocational
Education and Skill Development
The NEP highlights the
importance of incorporating vocational education and skill development into the
standard curriculum. It is crucial to establish well-equipped vocational
training centers and collaborate with industries to offer students practical
training and internships. Such efforts will help bridge the gap between
education and employment.
Inclusion and
Equity
NEP advocates for
inclusive education and aims to provide equal opportunities to all students.
The policy emphasizes the need to pay special attention to marginalized
communities, children with disabilities, and those from economically disadvantaged
backgrounds. Measures should be taken to ensure their access to quality
education and address any barriers that may hinder their learning. The policy
also promotes research and innovation in education. Funding and support should
be provided to encourage research activities in educational institutions.
Collaboration among academia, industry, and research organizations should be
fostered to drive innovation and solve real-world educational challenges.
Global
Collaboration
NEP 2020 aims to promote
international collaboration and exchange programs for students and teachers to
gain a global perspective. It seeks to establish partnerships with renowned
educational institutions and organizations worldwide to facilitate knowledge
sharing, faculty exchange, and collaborative research. The future outlook for
NEP 2020 is promising, as it focuses on a learner-centric approach, holistic
development, and the integration of technology and skill development. However,
successful implementation requires dedicated efforts, collaboration among
stakeholders, and continuous evaluation to ensure that the desired outcomes are
achieved.
