Understanding the challenges in implementing the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in primary school education

Abstract

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, that was proposed as a draft in 2019, was passed on July 2020. The most prominent change brought forwards by the policy is the change of existing 10+2 years of schooling system to 5+3+3+4 system introducing the three years before 1st standard into the national curriculum, citing the significance of the cognitive growth of a child during these primitive years. The policy has further laid down the pedagogical structure for higher education and other areas such as learning opportunities for people who have crossed the conventional age of education. NEP was welcome by the media and the people by negatively citing out a few aspects in the policy such as vocational education, enforcing regional language-based pedagogy, etc. The methods are alleged to promote further inequalities in the system and also portrayed as a desperate measure to escape the existing problems in the education system by devising an entirely new one. The policy is also alleged to undermine the Right To Education (RTE) of the citizens. Another allegation against the government was during the budget allocation when only 0.4% of the GDP was allotted to the education sector, against the promised 6% of GDP budget to implement NEP. The low allocation of budget makes the government’s plan to implement NEP sceptical to the citizens. Research has been conducted as part of the report which assesses the progress of NEP across two states – Kerala and Maharashtra – to gauge whether the government is in pace with the NEP task list timeline. The tasks that were to be completed in 2021 were chosen for the research. The research finds that the government’s plan with NEP has not been taped out throughout the nation, as State Board schools are not considered while making the shift to NEP. Even though the pace of NEP is synchronized with the timeline suggested, the scale at which NEP is being implemented is to be explored.