NEP 2024: The Latest Updates in NEP 2020 Explained

The Indian government introduced a revised National Education Policy (NEP) in 2020. The new education policy 2024 is an extension of the NEP 2020 aimed at equipping students with higher-order thinking and the skills required to succeed in the 21st century.

With a target of a 100% Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) for school education by 2030, the Ministry of Education has defined the learning objectives for preschool to secondary education. Stressing comprehension and numerical literacy, promoting India’s multilingual heritage, and vocational skills training and offering more flexibility in pursuing subject combinations of choice, the policy highlights the need for innovative assessment methodologies to move away from rote learning.

Why a New Education Policy?

The last educational policy before NEP 2020 was drafted in 1986. With the technological advancements that the world has seen in the subsequent decades, the previous outline of Indian education was somewhat outdated. To review and address this, the education ministry set up a panel headed by the ISRO chief K Kasturirangan. The objective of this review was to suggest changes to help contemporise the Indian education system making it universally accessible and equitable for children of all backgrounds.

Features of NEP 2024

• Prioritising Holistic Development — With a strong emphasis on experiential learning, a multidisciplinary approach, specially designed assessments, and higher-order thinking skills such as analytical thinking, critical reasoning, creative solutions, etc., the new National Education Policy 2024 (NEP 2024) aims to provide learners with an opportunity for holistic development. It aims to nurture the unique combination of skills and learning each individual learner is capable of.
• Leveraging Technology – NEP 2024 lays a strong emphasis on using smart edtech for enhancing learning experiences. It suggests the use of technology in teaching to keep pace with the latest developments in each field, bringing it into the classroom and learning repertoire at a quicker pace. It also leans on the use of technology to make learning accessible to all learners irrespective of their location and pace of learning.
• Driving Innovation and Research – Providing impetus to innovative thinking and creative solutions, the NEP 2024 lays the ground for early induction of students into research and innovation with initiatives like Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) under the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM). This supports a strong foundation in the fields of Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (MET) further pushing India’s agenda in research, design and manufacturing through higher education.
• Adaptability in Curriculum Design – Through the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) the NEP outlines the structural framework and its delivery mechanism. It allows room for institutes to manoeuvre and adapt lesson plans, assessments and learning experiences in keeping with the desired learning outcomes. For preschool to middle school stages, it emphasises the role of experiential learning delivered through contextually relevant curriculum design. For secondary education, it encourages institutes to offer subject choices to support the individuality of students. For higher education, it grants flexibility to the institutes to offer academic programs in keeping with the evolving needs of industry and the advancement of technology.
• Equipping Teachers with Training and Development – Recognising the key role teachers play in this mission to move forward the Indian education system into the 21st century, the new education policy 2024 stresses the need for training teachers in the latest teaching and learning methodologies to elicit the optimum learning outcome. The NEP outlines a full section and roadmap on teacher training and development requirements to keep pace with the evolving education system.
• Delivering Inclusion and Equity – India is a country of diverse backgrounds – multiple regional languages, different cultures, socio-economic backgrounds and demographics. The NEP stresses the need for an education structure that straddles all these differences and delivers education by providing equal opportunity to learn for all students regardless of their backgrounds, abilities or disabilities.
• Collaborating with the Private Sector – NEP 2024 recognises the role of private sector partnerships in elevating the educational paradigm in India. With a 100% GER mandate for a country as large and diverse as India, private sector partnership is a key factor for success. It allows for a quick ramping up and roll out of the education structure while providing relevant insights into the development of skill sets required for the 21st century. The NEP works towards delivering guidelines to help smoothen the process of institutional set-up to speed the implementation process up.
• Becoming Relevant to the Needs of the 21st Century – The idea that the Indian education system needs to be in step and relevant to the needs of the 21st-century world has been the main propellant behind the new education policy 2024. It aims to replace the old system of theoretical knowledge and rote learning with that of experiential learning, the culture of research and innovation and the ability for higher-order thinking. It aims to create global citizens with the capability for critical thinking, analytical reasoning and creative solutions to help take India and the world to the next wave of development.

Challenges in NEP 2024

• Execution and Implementation – With a vision this large, the new education policy aims at a total overhaul of the current education structure. This poses immense execution and implementation challenges at each stage. Even with a detailed plan and framework, the education policy needs meticulous rollout where all aspects align not just in word but also in the spirit of the letter.
• Enrolment Goals – One of the key goals under NEP 2024 is being able to achieve a 100% GER in the next decade. Not only is this an enormously large endeavour, but it also poses a complex execution challenge. With diverse socio-economic backgrounds and still-in-works educational infrastructure at the grassroots level, the target to ensure 100% basic literacy and numeracy is a big challenge.
• Massive Scale – The NEP 2024 does a great job of laying down the strategy, envisioning an education system that grooms and nurtures a youth with a skill set relevant to the 21st century. This strategy requires multifaceted, simultaneous and meticulous execution on multiple levels. Developing educational infrastructure, having trained teachers, a defined yet flexible curriculum, innovative assessment strategies, and maintaining institutional and educational standards across block, district, state and national levels is a massive undertaking.
• Teacher Availability and Training – Already facing a shortage of qualified teachers, the Indian education system now needs to work on not only training and recruiting more teachers but also training those currently doing it in newer teaching methodologies. In addition to the current subject-specific authority structure, teachers are now required to help students develop their interdisciplinary learning. This requires teachers to work in newer ways with a wider knowledge base.
• Redefining Assessments – The NEP defines assessment design as a specialised skill with the need for personnel trained in assessment design to test students for theoretical knowledge of concepts as well as their ability to apply the learning in different and evolving scenarios. This leaves institutes and teachers dependent and falling back on standardised testing structures till this support is made available to them.
• Ease of Entry and Exit – The NEP also aligns the Indian education system with the credit mechanism practised in global universities. Students will now be able to take time between their courses to gain experience and return to learning where they left it as per their credits. While this provides students with the ease to pursue education on demand and as per their own learning requirements, it also leaves higher education institutes with a challenge to provide adequate infrastructure at all times.
• Funding Challenges – Given its scale, depth and breadth, the education system in India needs sustained high investments from the government as well as long-term funding and support from the private sector to ensure this vision is realised to its optimum potential.

The new education policy is a welcome move towards revolutionising the Indian education system and bringing it in step with the needs and demands of the 21st century. It is aimed at providing our youth the advantage of practical knowledge rooted in the Indian ethos. At the same time, as with every transformative large vision, it comes with its implementation challenges that require a detail-oriented approach to fully implement and execute this vision.

Last Updated on November 12, 2024