National education policy 2020 - A progressive policy

New Education Policy 2020: A look at the proposals on curriculum, courses and medium of instruction, and the takeaways for students, schools and universities.

Main Purpose of NEP

An NEP is a comprehensive framework to guide the development of education in the country. The need for a policy was first felt in 1964 when Congress MP Siddheshwar Prasad criticised the then government for lacking a vision and philosophy for education. The same year, a 17-member Education Commission, headed by then UGC Chairperson D S Kothari, was constituted to draft a national and coordinated policy on education. Based on the suggestions of this Commission, Parliament passed the first education policy in 1968.

All the three NEP

A new NEP usually comes along every few decades. India has had NEP. The first came in 1968 and the second in 1986, under Indira gandhi and Rajiv  gandhi respectively; the NEP of 1986 was revised in 1992 when P V Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister. The third is the NEP released Wednesday under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra modi

Download PDF of NEP 2020

You can easily download the PDF by clicking on the link given below 

NEP PDF download link

🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

Key features of NEP

New pedagogical and curricular structure of school education (5+3+3+4): 3 years in Anganwadi/pre school and 12 years in school.

For children of 3 to 6 years: Access to free, safe, high quality ECCE at Anganwadis /Pre school/ Balvatika.

Foundational Learning Curriculum for age group of 3-8 divided in two parts:

1. From age 3-6 in ECCE
2. Prior to the age of 5 every child will move to a “Preparatory Class” or “Balvatika” (that is, before Class 1)

Age 6 to 8, Grade 1-2: Foundational Stage

Age 8-11, Grades 3-5: Preparatory Stage, play, discovery, and activity based and interactive classroom learning.

Age 11-14, Grade 5-8: Middle Stage, experiential learning in the sciences, mathematics, arts, social sciences, and humanities.

Age 14-18, Grade 9-12: Secondary Stage, multidisciplinary study, greater critical thinking, flexibility and student choice of subjects.

Medium of instruction upto grade 5, and preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be home language/ mother tongue/ local language.

Beginning with Mathematics, all subjects to be offered at 2 levels.

School students will have 10 bag-less days during which they are taught a vocation of their choice (informal internship)

School Exams will be held only for 3 levels – Classes 3, 5 and 8. Assessment will shift to a formative style which encourages higher-order thinking skills, critical thinking and conceptual clarity.

Board Exams to continue but these will be designed for holistic development. A new national assessment centre PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) will be established. Board exams will have less stakes.

All students will be allowed to take Board Exams on up to two occasions during any given school year, one main examination and one for improvement, if desired

Higher Education and College Entrance Exams

National Testing Agency will conduct a common college entrance exam twice a year. This will be implemented from the 2022 session.

Bachelor’s degree will be of 4 years with exit options as follows.

• Exit after 1 year: Certificate
• Exit after 2 years: Diploma

Mid term drop outs will be given the option to complete the degree after a break.

Bachelor’s programmes will be multidisciplinary in nature and there will be no rigid separation between arts and sciences.

Indian arts, languages and culture will be promoted at all levels.

M.Phil degree will be discontinued.

By 2040, all higher education institutions like IITs will become multidisciplinary. There will be greater inclusion of arts and humanities subjects for science students and vice-versa.

Selected universities from among the top 100 universities in the world will be facilitated to operate in India.

The system of affiliated colleges will be phased out in 15 years and colleges will be given greater autonomy and power to grant degrees. The deemed university status will end.

I hope that this information is useful for you .

Thanks, for approaching this blog 🙏🙏