National Education Policy in focus at Niti Meet

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday called on chief ministers to help develop a ‘clear, timebound roadmap’ for the implementation of the National Education Policy. He was addressing the seventh meeting of the governing council of Niti Aayog.

NEP’s implementation, both in school and higher education, were two of the four key agenda items taken up for discussion with CMs at the meeting in New Delhi, besides crop diversification and urban governance.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan also sought state governments’ support in implementing NEP and pointed to the several steps being undertaken by states to boost learning outcomes, capacity-building of teachers, and in mainstreaming skilling.

State governments are learnt to have shared the progress made so far on all four areas at the meeting. Niti Aayog will take up and closely assess these as well as any other concerns raised by states in the coming days.

The PM said the meeting was a culmination of months of rigorous brainstorming and consultations between the Centre and states to identify ‘national priorities’.

“For the first time in India’s 75 years of independence, all of India’s chief secretaries met together in one place and deliberated issues of national importance for three days. This collective process led to the development of the agenda for this meeting,” Modi said.

The implementation of NEP had figured prominently at a three-day National Conference of Chief Secretaries chaired by Modi in June.

A series of education-related presentations at the Dharamshala conference went into the specifics of the NEP implementation plan.

In keeping with NEP goals, states were asked to ensure 100% gross enrolment ratio by 2030, check dropout rates, work on declining learning levels by 2026, clean up teacher recruitment, and mainstream skill and vocational education for 21st century needs.

The decline in learning levels amid the Covid-19 pandemic has also been flagged as another major area for action. States have been asked to focus on ensuring that functional literacy and numeracy goals are achieved by 2026-27. The mother tongue must also be brought in as a medium of instruction until Grade 5 as far as possible, it was suggested.

Among other actionable areas, states have been advised to reduce the curriculum, remove silos between curricular areas and between government departments and switch to a multi-dimensional and holistic assessment as advocated by the NEP. Every state should also set up the State School Standards Authority advocated in the NEP to ensure that certain minimal professional and quality standards are followed by all schools, it was suggested.

The need to integrate skilling with mainstream education, include it in the credit framework and ‘saturate’ vocational education from classes 6-9 has been advocated.

The NEP focus on teacher education is another major area that requires state level action.

A strong case has been made to clean up teacher recruitment by opting for transparent online processes, use eligibility qualifications issued by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), and switch to the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) for recruiting teachers.

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