Union Cabinet made a decision to transform the school as well as higher education system through national education policy. Cabinet also renamed the HRD ministry to the ministry of education. The last education policy was passed in 1986 which is around 3 decades back and they were an urgent need to transform the education industry. The New National education policy is based majorly on 4 pillars Access, Equity, Quality, and Accountability. New Policy comprises of 5+3+3+4 structure in which it has 12 years of schooling and 3 years of pre-schooling. Previously in the old education policy, we followed the 10+2 structure.
As per the vision of the New Education policy, the Government has approved the New India Literacy Program (NILP) aiming at providing Education Access for All, covering all aspects of education for non-literates of 15 years and above. Let’s take a look at some of the major features of the New Education Policy.
- Participation of 3 Crores students as the volunteers
- Around 20 Lakhs students of Teacher and Higher education will be actively involved
- The term adult education is replaced by “Education to all”.
- Support will be given by PRIs, Anganwadi, and Asha Workers including 50 lakhs NSS, and NCC Volunteers.
- Central portal to be developed by NIC for aggregated data capturing.
- Convergence of different ministries for effective implementation of the New India Literacy Program.
- Annual Achievement Survey of Learning outcomes from random samples of different states and union territories.
- Assessment of literacy at local schools using the scientific format to capture real-time data.
Through this new education policy government is planning to bring around 2 crores of students into the mainstream of education. It will help to increase the Gross Enrollment Ratio from preschool education to secondary by 2030. Through this policy government is thinking of making India the “Global Knowledge Power “and it will only be achieved by making the education system more flexible, holistic, and multi-disciplinary.
Through this NEP, the Indian education system and research facility will become more sturdy and with the help of this, students who spent thousands of dollars on education in foreign countries will get global standards in line with India.
As we know that young children learn new things quickly when they are taught in their own local language instead of some other language that they are not used to learning. This policy also recognizes the same thus they added a point in this new policy that children up to grade 5 will be taught in their mother language but it can also refer to grade 8 if required. This would make it easy for the students to learn in their mother tongue.