New Education policy : Creation of an enabling environment

With the advent of fourth industrial revolution continuous disruption will be lead by digital technologies. It is expected to transform economies, jobs and society itself. Here, education is the key component to shape the future workforce. Around 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new jobs that don’t exist as of now.

The India education system, thus needs to imbibe a culture of knowledge and life long learning. The Draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 seems to be based on this premise.

The NEP 2019 highlights the proposed structuring of school education as Foundational (3 years of pre-school & 1 to 2 grade), preparatory (grade 3 to 5), middle (grade 6-8) and High (grades 9 to 12 in two phases of 9-10 & 11-12). The structure is based on a child’s developmental journey and ensures skills like logical thinking, social skills are imbibed while moving away from rote learning. The transformation requires a change in the pedagogy, thus teachers require capacity development with new approaches. NEP 2019 discusses courses for teacher training for skill & expertise up gradation.

The NELP 2019 proposes multi-disciplinary learning entailing integration of humanities and arts stream with STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths). It is expected to result in increased creativity and innovation, deeper learning and master of curricula across fields.

It also proposes measure to improve faculty effectiveness and responsiveness through diversified faculty, reduced student teacher ratios, flexibility in curriculum design to help the faculty motivated.

NEP 2019 aims to bring the higher education in India on par with international standards. It clearly highlight the intentions in striving forward with the policy of inclusivity of all socio-economic classes of the society to create a future ready workforce.

Topics: GS-II: Social Sector Services Education Human Resources