NEP 2020: Robust policy support needed across all levels of education

NEP 2020 aims to transform the educational landscape of the country by reconfiguring the educational structure. It primarily aims at making education accessible, equitable and inclusive for all. It makes an attempt to bridge the gap between the current learning outcomes and 21st century skills which is a set of prerequisites to excel in global arena.

Among the pathbreaking changes recommended by the policy are — restructuring of pedagogical framework as 5+3+3+4, no silos or division between curriculum and extra-curricular, encouragement to multilingualism, mother tongue to be promoted as the language of instruction.

Moving away from traditional model of teaching to competency-based teaching and learning with focus on experiential, art and sport integration, blended learning for holistic education, reducing curriculum to core essentials to make room for interactive classrooms.

It also lays emphasis on multidisciplinary approach of education with integration of more contemporary subjects like Artificial Intelligence, Environmental Education, Disaster Management, Design Thinking, Machine Learning, Holistic Health, Global Citizenship etc.

In order to turn schools in to happy learning spaces, it addresses the need of adding vocational subjects in all classes and scheduling bagless days in school calendar. It also talks about 360 degree and formative assessment to make assessments more comprehensive.

Now as far as implementation of the policy is concerned there is a dire need for robust policy support program across all levels of education. I strongly believe that no change in education sector is possible without preparing our teachers to assimilate the change in their classroom transactions and integrating innovative teaching pedagogies. For that purpose, teachers need to be empowered through rigorous and regular training exercise.

Now talking about the entire spectrum, we need to see that changes introduced at school level need to be completely aligned with the school of higher education to implement it seamlessly.

Not only the education sector but even the employment sector has to work in complete harmony to achieve the desired objective.

So, the proposed changes need to be conveniently cascaded across the different segments of education as well as service sector to make the policy implementation successful. The policy document needs to be followed by all stakeholders, be it teaching fraternity or community of parents, in letter and spirit to turn it into living reality which has the ability to support the 21st century learners in all capacity, to excel in global arena.

(Garima Pandey is the Principal of Central Academy International School, Delhi. The views expressed are personal. )