Part 1: Do NEP Reforms Fix the Gaps in Current School Education?
The QuintAlong with renaming the Ministry of Human Resource Development as the Ministry of Education, the Union government unveiled the New Education Policy 2020 recently. The announcements are plenty – Mphil is scrapped, four year undergraduate programme is back, vocational training is mandated in schools, teaching in mother tongue or regional languages is advised at school levels, board exams played down, and more. Almost 34 years after the National Education Policy was first formulated, in 1986, these are the first major reforms that it's going through. From an overall perspective, the new policy, announced by the Modi government on 29 July, aims to overhaul the Indian education system with an emphasis on access to education, attempt to move away from rote learning, reforms at all levels from school to higher education, and reducing the number of regulators of higher education.