GS-2: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
Discussion on New Education Policy and the road ahead
Union Education and Skill Development Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan and Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Virendra Kumar jointly launched the booklet on One-year New Education Policy (NEP) – 2020 Achievement.
They also launched some major initiatives of the New Education Policy- 2020 such as
NIPUN Bharat foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) tools and resources on DIKSHA;
Virtual School of National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS);
Alternate Academic Calendar of NCERT;
Release of ‘Priya’- accessibility booklet developed by the NCERT and Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities.
NEP 2020 envisages education as a continuum without any segmentation. With this perspective, the Department of School Education and Literacy has taken up a multitude of initiatives at all levels of school education and has achieved 62 major milestones which will eventually transform the school education sector.
Vidya Pravesh:
The Vidya Pravesh scheme is 3 months play preparation program for the students studying in class one that aims at education for all in the country.
It aims at spreading the concept of playschools to the remotest parts of the country and to ensure that no student is deprived of education.
Through this scheme, all the remote students will have access to playschools.
Priya -The Accessibility Warrior
It provides glimpses into the world of a girl named Priya who met an accident and could not walk, due to plastered leg with depiction of how Priya managed to participate in all activities at school, and in the process learnt the importance of the accessibility thus taking the pledge of being an accessibility warrior.
The comic book is also available with Indian Sign Language (ISL) explanatory videos.
NIPUN Bharat FLN:
The full form of NIPUN Bharat Programme is the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy Bharat Programme.
NIPUN Bharat FLN is a program with a vision to ensure every child achieves the desired learning competencies in reading, writing and numeracy by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27
NIPUN Bharat FLN tools and resources has been made available under a separate vertical for FLN resources developed under DIKSHA to assist and mentor States/UTs and teachers for implementing NIPUN Bharat guidelines.
Diksha Portal was launched in 2017 for providing a digital platform to teachers giving them an opportunity to learn and train themselves and connect with the teacher community.
This vertical has infographics and videos on learning outcomes and assessment tools for teachers to facilitate them.
Challenges and way ahead:
Acceptability by all universities is the first and foremost challenge in the effective implementation.
Credits earned in first institution when taken forward to another institution, both institutions must be of equivalent standards otherwise it will create problem in encashing the credits in the new institution. So, we need to have a standardised definition of credits valuation. For example, there is 10-point system or an 8-point system or 6-point system.
So there has to be a framework to exchange from one system to the other, it has been prepared by committee already and is yet to be approved, regulated and also different institutions have to be given choices of joining hands together.
