Page 43 - Mayo College November 2025

National Education Policy (NEP) 2020

he much-awaited National Education Policy GEC, NAC, HEGC have not been constituted. While
(NEP) 2020, formulated after an interregnum of the NCF-FS (National Curriculum Framework for
34 years and incorporating most of the detailed Foundational Stage) 2022 and National Curriculum
Trecommendations of the K. Kasturirangan Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023 have
Committee, was presented to the public on July 29, 2020. been published, the curriculums for teacher and adult
The compact 65-page NEP 2020 mandates three years education are pending.
of compulsory early childhood care and education for Moreover, smooth national rollout of NEP 2020 has
all children countrywide in the 3-6 age bracket through been derailed by resurrecting the buried ghost of the
reconfiguration of the 10+2 school system with a new three-language formula. Several states of peninsular
5+3+3+4 school continuum; curriculum, pedagogy and India including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala,
exam reforms in school education to encourage concep- have rejected the policy in toto because of its endorse-
tual comprehension, creativity and critical thinking capa- ment of the three-language formula and imposition of
bilities rather than rote learning; introduction of certified Hindi. Tamil Nadu has already drawn up its alterna-
multiple exit and re-entry options in higher education tive State Education Policy 2025. Most importantly,
and a system of credits to be stored in a national ABC NEP 2020 implementation has been stymied because
(academic bank of credits) digital repository; phasing of inadequate budgetary allocations — the Central and
out the system of all undergrad colleges affiliating with state governments have conspicuously failed to fulfil the
parent universities, and graded autonomy for undergrad policy’s mandate to increase national education spend-
colleges under a ‘light but tight’ regulatory framework; ing to 6 percent of GDP.
and permitting top-ranked foreign universities to set up EducationWorld has closely tracked the roll out
campuses in India. On the flip side, the policy mandates and formulation of NEP 2020 in several unmatched
too many regulatory supervisory agencies while promis- long-form features including a detailed critique of NEP
ing “light but tight” regulation. 2020. See www.educationworld.in Archives — Cover
Five years after NEP 2020 was approved, policy imple- stories ‘NEP 2020: Visionary charter, educracy shadow’
mentation has been snail-paced. The several supervisory (August 2020) & ‘National Education Policy 2020: 5
and regulatory committees it mandates including HECI, years later snail-pace implementation’ (August 2025).

NOVEMBER 2025 EDUCATIONWORLD 43