India has infinite potential and a long history of offering excellent education to its youth and beyond. The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 will revamp India’s education system by emphasizing skill and holistic development. This technique promotes personal growth and new learning through education. All elements of NEP promote character, integrity, moral values, respect for others, cleanliness, politeness, service spirit, liberty, scientific temper, responsibility, etiquette, justice, and equality.
Takshila, Nalanda, and Vikramshila are our world’s oldest universities. Indians are proud of their intellectual heritage and worldwide relevance. Colleges, saints, sages, and emperors made India the “Golden Sparrow” and “Knowledge capitol”. Historic Indian colleges taught language, medicine, philosophy, logic, arts, crafts, science, and liberal arts to global scholars.
I believe the National Education Policy-2020, which celebrated its third anniversary on July 29, is the first education policy in free India to continue the historic tradition of delivering quality education to all Indians. This education model includes flexibility, ease-of-study, entry-exit system, ABC, fluid scholar movement (credit transfer), online courses, merging knowledge streams, globalization, quality, rating, and more. The golden era education policy would have been NEP2020.
Education makes India contemporary, self-sufficient, and developed. The first NEP 2020 pillar is “Holistic and Multidisciplinary Education”. Multidisciplinary education is a major NEP step, allowing students to study different subjects and link information. Creative thinking and strong knowledge linkage are encouraged. We want students to choose arts, humanities, languages, sciences, social science, soft skills, ethical, professional, technical, and vocational courses regardless of their major. This broad, multidisciplinary education produces well-rounded students.
Flexible, learner-centered education is needed, not teacher-centered. Pre-NEP schooling was rigorous and did not allow course choices outside the stream. The NEP stresses early schooling for holistic development. Instead of only cognitive growth, it promotes social, emotional, physical, and creative development, creating well-rounded persons ready for life’s challenges. When switching from rote memorization to competency-based learning, critical thinking and problem-solving are key. Critical thinking and inventiveness are crucial in a fast-changing culture.
Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) is another NEP component that gives students independence. This bank holds learner credits in a secure online ledger, like money digital banks. Any student or institution can use these credits. To get any degree, students can transfer credits from college “A” to institution “B”. This will let students switch colleges and save their credits, unlike the existing method.
The concept promotes inclusion by supporting native language education till Grade 5 to facilitate communication and expression. Technology integrates people for the digital age, and degree programs accommodate varied learning styles. NEP promotes equality to provide all students equal chances. Students shall learn equally regardless of caste, race, religion, or other factors. The NEP can improve labor skills, boost innovation, and make society inclusive. The NEP 2020 becomes India’s development pillar with these revisions.
Another great NEP concept is integrating vocational (skill) education with higher education. This NEP pillar promotes vocational skills to boost employment. Occupational skills training for 50% of schoolchildren and college students is the target. This will improve vocational training in schools and universities and increase student employability. Vocational education and practical learning create career-relevant skills. Vocational credits can be transferred to non-vocational courses for degrees and certificates.
NEP teaches knowledge, collaboration, teamwork, self-reliance, resilience, and good communication. NEP promotes multilingualism and mother-tongue education to revitalize Indian languages. Many cognitive science studies show that teaching in the student’s native language improves creativity and originality. Early school and higher education are taught in main Indian languages. The linguistic change will pay off for years.
NEP creates well-rounded, inventive, and creative citizens of our great nation. NEP’s interdisciplinary and integrated curriculum promotes advancement, scientific temper, intellectual curiosity, and 21st-century skills while studying one or more areas of interest. Strong collaborations may create an inclusive and dynamic educational environment that fulfills students’ diverse needs and offers them the skills, knowledge, and values they need to flourish in the 21st century global world.
NEP combines online and offline learning. Covid-19 revealed online learning’s power. Online and offline training would provide students practically infinite course alternatives. Instead of having all knowledge in one institution, intuitions may provide online courses across India, strengthening relationships with abroad schools.
NPTEL, SWAYAM portal, and other online channels educate students using amazing internet and mobile technologies. Another NEP component is outcome-based education. Student learning assessment matters. Grading students requires criteria. Teacher must concentrate on kids. 21st-century abilities must be taught through subject-matter, ethics, liberal arts, and community-based courses. Need data structures, programming, machine learning, and AI courses. Creative evaluation techniques must measure student learning. Reading, writing, and reproducing encourage rote learning rather than intellectual or practical abilities. Oral, written, public, external, continuous, comprehensive, and competency-based examinations can evaluate students. Continuous, formative, competency-based evaluation is NEP’s emphasis. The test assesses critical thinking, conceptual clarity, and analysis.
NEP 2020 modernizes India’s education system for a knowledge economy. Choice-based transdisciplinary education, innovation, entrepreneurship, skill development, and employment emphasize knowledge acquisition and application.
Quality teacher recruitment and training underpin education policy. A four-year integrated curriculum will employ teachers. Almost all centrally subsidized schools are starting this 4-year integrated curriculum. Other significant institutes include the world-renowned Indian Institute of Technologies. These schools will produce world-class teachers, improving student learning. Teachers and principals get continuing professional development from NEP.
Indian students often study abroad. NEP 2020 aims to curb higher education migration and attract many foreign students. Twining programs with top foreign universities, allowing top universities to open campuses in India, signing MoUs between Indian and foreign universities, research-teaching collaboration, student-faculty exchange, allowing IITs to open campuses abroad, “study-in-India” programs, etc. are major steps in this direction. Entrepreneurship requires risk-taking and defiance of job stability and steady existence. Entrepreneurs must be inventive, bold, pioneering, and risk-taking to start businesses. Vocational education, internships in industry, tinkering laboratories, and school creativity promote employment production rather than job seeking.
The National Education Policy 2020 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s fast implementation are laudable.
