Workshop on National Education Policy by PM Publisher

India’s first Education Policy was passed and implemented in 1986. After thirty-four years, the National Education Policy (NEP) for India has been updated, revised and approved on 29 July 2020. The policy signifies a huge milestone for India’s Education system, which will certainly make India an attractive destination for higher education world-wide.

The policy is based on the pillars of “Access, Equity, Quality, Affordability, and Accountability” and will transform India into a vibrant knowledge hub.

1. The NEP brings about a range of changes in the system of higher education aiming to improve it with the goal of “creation of greater opportunities for individual employment.

The key highlights from the new policy aim at:

a. Creating an system consisting large, multidisciplinary universities and colleges, with at least one in or near every district, and more across India which offer their programs in local/Indian languages

b. Shifting from a rigid curriculum to multidisciplinary undergraduate education

c. Offering faculty and institutional autonomy

d. Revamping the curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and student support for enhanced student experiences

e. Reaffirming the integrity of faculty and institutional leadership positions through merit- appointments and career progression based on teaching, research, and service

f. Establishing National Research Foundation to fund brightest, peer-reviewed research and to actively seed research in universities and colleges

g. Improved Governance of by high qualified independent boards having academic and administrative autonomy

h. “light but tight” regulation by a single regulator for higher education;

i. Giving increased access, equity, and inclusion through a range of measures such as offering scholarships by private/philanthropic universities for disadvantaged and underprivileged students

j. Giving access to education to all learners (disadvantage/ learners with special needs) through online education, and Open Distance Learning (ODL).

2. A goal of the NEP is to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education, including vocational education to 50part percent by 2035 from 26.3 percent as of 2018.

3. NEP will replace the fragmented nature of India’s existing higher education system and instead bring together higher education institutions into large multidisciplinary universities, colleges, and clusters/knowledge hubs. The policy states that over time, single-stream will be phased out over time.

4. For now, while the NEP states that a system of granting graded autonomy based on accreditation will be adopted for colleges, eventually, the aim is to transform them into an autonomous degree-granting college, or a constituent college of a university.

So it is very important for our educators to understand the important aspects of NEP 2020, Gajera Vidyabhavan has organized a highly informative and interactive training session conducted by Ms. Meenakshi Aneja. The session began with the lighting of the lamp followed by the motivational speech by Mr. Jayesh Patel and welcome speech by the school Principal Mr. Asish Debnath.

In this session, Educators learned about the key factors and the purpose is to make learning less stressful and more learners oriented. New subjects like coding will be introduced at an earlier level, from class 6, to modernize the syllabi, as per the policy.