Briefing about the salient features of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, Minister of Higher Education, Information Technology and Bio-Technology C.N. Ashwath Narayan said that the policy is designed to make India’s young generation more competent and to prepare it to face global competition.
Inaugurating a seminar on NEP at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Auditorium on the Gulbarga University campus, the Minister said that the policy has been drafted after incorporating over three lakh suggestions that were collected over a period of five years.
“Flexibility in learning and educational administration is one of the core ideas envisaged by NEP. It allows educational institutions to collaborate with other institutions in their neighbourhood to pool resources and expertise. It also allows learners to join academics at any point and leave at any time and the part that they learnt will be duly recognised to offer them a qualification. The other important aspect is the autonomy of educational institutions. It sees each college as an autonomous institution and wants it to develop as an independent university to offer its own degrees,” Mr. Narayan said.
Stressing the importance of treating each child as a unique learner, the Minister said that the uniform teaching methodology to mould different talents into a single framework was unscientific.
“Each child is unique and has different levels of cognition. Moulding all students in a single framework is unscientific. Learning should not be restricted or confined to classrooms but be extended to the real fields of life. Many scientific studies have shown that children have great learning capacities between the age of three and six. But, our children have hitherto missed the learning opportunities at this period as our formal schooling starts at the age of six. NEP has taken all these crucial issues into consideration and orients the stakeholders to corrective measures,” Mr. Narayan said.
On State intervention in private educational institutions, Mr. Narayan said that the government will not be a hurdle in the ways of private institutions.
“We [the government] will not be a hurdle to any educational institution. We won’t trouble them. We want to implement NEP and take it to the last learner through you only. We can effectively implement the policy only with your active support and cooperation. The gross enrolment ratio in higher education in the State has risen to 32% in 2019-2020 from 28.8% in the year before. We have set a target of taking it to 50% in the next 15 years,” Mr. Narayan said.
