What can unlock NEP’s full potential

Six years after the launch of National Education Policy 2020, its implementation across India remains uneven, fragmented, and unbefitting of a transformative policy that emerged after one of the most extensive consultative exercises in Indian education. The optimism and intellectual excitement that NEP 2020, and the multiple National Curriculum Frameworks, once evoked, has now given way to uncertainty, as schools and colleges struggle to implement it in the classrooms.

This leads us to an important question: if this was a visionary policy, supported by a thoughtfully designed curriculum and whose intent received wide public approval and endorsement, why has its pan-India implementation so far remained a distant dream?

The answer lies in a truth most education reformers tend to overlook—that good curriculum design is just the beginning. Reaching the reform to classroom and students is a long-drawn process requiring patient and sustained handholding to create institutional readiness, build teacher capacity, align school  and college administration to the new education system, and above all adapt the new curriculum to local conditions and grassroots realities.

Why a good curriculum design is not enough

While the Centre did a commendable job of launching the National Education Policy, the institutional implementation process was left largely to the states, which had a mixed response to NEP. State-level adoption differed depending upon the priorities and preparedness of State Education Ministries, Departments, and Boards. While some states coordinated with the Centre to implement NEP in their schools and universities, others, asserting that education is a state subject, chose to draft their own State Education Policy (SEP), prepare their own curriculum, and develop their own learning materials.

States like West Bengal, Karnataka, and Kerala, with different political priorities, wrote their own SEPs. Others like UP, MP, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, which were politically aligned with the Centre, actively made efforts to implement NEP successfully. Defying the belief that political alignment with the Centre was the sole determining factor in the successful implementation of NEP, states like Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana actively coordinated with the Centre to implement NEP from its launch.

Managing challenges and bottlenecks

A complete overhaul of the education system through restructuring and reforms at all levels, from early education to higher education, is never easy, especially in a vast nation like India. It’s important to understand that factors such as diverse geographies, languages, cultures, political priorities, and administrative capacities determine each state’s readiness to receive and implement change and reforms. Therefore, the way forward lies not in devising a uniform approach, but one that understands each state’s diverse challenges, allows flexibility, is deeply collaborative, and is able to provide sustained academic and operational support.

Strengthening centre-state collaboration

Creation of a permanent Centre-State Reform Implementation Council with members from all state education ministries, education departments, school boards, and universities, will not only facilitate implementation of NEP 2020 but also of the future reforms. The Council will place the onus of NEP implementation on states by encouraging them to contextualise NEP to their linguistic, cultural, and administrative realities. This can be done through an NEP Implementation Cell in each state with its own targets, timelines, and budget. The Council can work closely with NEP Cells in each state supporting and monitoring its progress.

By doing so, the Centre moves away from being seen as imposing NEP on States and instead assumes a more supportive role of facilitating its implementation in the states. A shared vision with flexible pathways for the states will help them adapt the curriculum to local languages and pedagogies and pave the way for creating relevance and acceptance locally.

Investing in teacher capacity building

Teachers are the most important link between policy and practice. One time orientation in reforms is grossly insufficient.  Teacher capacity building has to be continuous and sustained with periodic workshops, on-line learning modules, mentoring and peer-learning communities that will help teachers transition from understanding reforms to implementing them confidently.

Teacher feedback must be heard, discussed, analysed and used to bring meaningful changes in the curriculum and its implementation process.

Aligning assessment with new learning goals

Adopting the competency-based learning framework means giving up the traditional assessment systems that reward rote memorisation. As teachers introduce new learning goals, they will need the support to align their assessment to the new learning outcomes.

The NCERT, NCTE, new assessment bodies such as PARAKH, Boards of Education at the Centre and states will have to be ready to orient teachers and share samplers to help them adapt to the new system of assessment. This will also require training teachers to address the concerns of stakeholders such as parents who have only known the traditional system of assessment and help them understand the change.

Financial support to sustain the reform process

Policy reforms happen at large-scale. Development of curriculum and instructional materials, creating digital learning infrastructure, teacher learning resources, vocational education infrastructure all involve major expense that needs to be provided for in the budget. The budgetary allocation of 6%, recommended by NEP, has not been adhered to so far by the Centre or States, which is a major stumbling block in implementation of NEP. All departments, whether at Centre or States, require financial support to implement changes. Therefore, education needs generous allocation in the annual budgets of Centre and States to enable the transformation.

Building policy ownership at institution level

While monitoring mechanisms play a very important role, what will truly ensure the implementation of NEP in letter and spirit is its ownership by schools and colleges. Schools, colleges, teachers, parents, and local communities must believe in NEP and have faith in reforms as pathway to a better future for their children.

Although the government’s role is undeniably immense, NEP ‘s real success will not be measured by the policy documents or textbooks prepared by the government, but by what happens inside the classroom. The most inspiring stories of NEP implementation will come from practitioners—the teachers and professors—who choose to own and implement NEP. These will be the stories of their tireless efforts to make learning more meaningful for their students.

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