Education Policy

New Education Policy: THE BIG CHANGE In July 2020, a New Education policy was announced in India with fundamental changes in the education system for the students and also for the teachers and mentors. The education system has been formalised keeping in mind to make the education process interesting, building strong foundation, imparting practical education through experiments, imparting vocational training to each student and encouraging research based studies. With the above changes our Indian education system will be at par with global education and India plans to set some renowned Global Universities. FOUR NEW STAGES PREPARATORY STAGE National Education Policy has been announced with a 5+3+3+4 system for school, with the first 5 years which is the Preparatory stage starting from an early age of 3 years of the child and the formal school system will start from preparatory class, nursery classes, grade 1 and grade 2. These 5 years the student will be prepared for their education by imparting training to them while playing outdoor, indoor games, puzzles, developing motoring skills, cleanliness, moral and physical development and other activities. These 5 years will be play and activity based education and there won’t be any formal exams. Thus the student will be periodically promoted the next grade after completion of each academic year. The objective is to make the initial education system very interesting and attractive so that the children’s/students develop a liking to attend the school without any compulsion. The new education system’s objective is providing education from early age to the children the way they love to spend most of the time in a mentored environment so that they develop a liking for the school. In today’s scenario in the initial days, the students going either to Play School, Nursery or Grade 1 at times tries to avoid going to school by citing some excuses and in turn the parents have to force them to go to the school by adopting various means. Generally it has been seen that every individual irrespective of his/her financial or social background wants that their children should attend school and become educated. They get their children admitted to school in their locality and the children starts going to school but at times the illiterate or semi-literate parents may not be able to support/help their wards in doing homework or other studies which starts very early in our current schooling system, further since they are unable to do homework, do self-studies regularly they start lagging in their studies from their peer mate and also they may not be able to score good marks in the test / evaluation. All these make them feel uncomfortable. This may be one of the reasons the children get dis- interested in the school and in turn some of the students leave the school at various levels. Such school dropout happens since the school environment initially may not be providing a conducive environment to the students, keeping that in mind the in the New education Policy the Preparatory stage has been formalised so that the children gets the most comfortable and conducive school environment from the initial days that the child develops a liking for the school and adopts the same and continues going to school. FOUNDATION STAGE After completion of the preparatory stage the student gets promoted to the next stage which is termed as Foundation stage. The Foundation stage is of 3 years starting from grade 3rd till grade 5th. The foundation stage shall be taught to the students and to make the learning easy and simple it will be provided in the children’s mother tongue or the local regional language. Though it is not mandatory for the student to study in the local regional language, they may even choose an English medium to study if they feel comfortable in English. In this stage the main aim is to lay general groundwork for all subjects, reading, writing and speaking. MIDDLE STAGE After completion of the foundation level the students shall be promoted to Middle stage. The Middle stage is again for 3 years starting from grade 6th to grade 8th. During these three years the student shall study normal subjects like Maths, Science, and Social Science and apart from these subjects they will be given choice to study three languages which will include foreign language apart from Indian language. Another thing which has been included in the curriculum is Vocational training. The Student may choose any vocational training course which they will be taught by giving them work to perform and this way the vocational training will be learnt by the student by performing the task physically in the lab. Under this vocational training the students will be given options for computer coding also. The exposure to computer coding will be given to the student in this Middle stage. In this stage the focus will be to impart teaching through experiments and to exploration of relations among different subjects. HIGHER SECONDARY STAGE The student’s shall reach the Higher Secondary stage after completion of the Middle stage. The Higher secondary stage shall be completely different from the current prevailing education system. There will be no Stream Selection as being done in our current prevailing system. Currently a student after completion of his Secondary education (Class 10 standard), they have to select the stream which is mainly Science, Commerce and Arts/Humanities. But now in the New Education policy the Students can choose subjects based on his interest and acquired skills and pursue them. For example a student who may choose to study Maths in Higher Secondary Stage may not necessarily study Physics, Chemistry may choose Accounts, Biology, Music etc. The Higher Secondary stage will have four year Multidisciplinary studies with greater depth of the subjects, critical thinking and greater attention to life aspiration. These four year will have a semester system and will have 8 Semesters. GRADUATION & POST GRADUATION After School the admission to College will be based on the competitive Exam which will be conducted by National Test Agency (NTA). NTA shall conduct common modular entrance test multiple times in a year in various subjects. The Graduation will be for four year with an option of exit and re-entry at any time. If a student completes one year and has to leave the studies due to any reason he/she will be awarded a Certificate, if the student leaves after two years of studies, then will Diploma and if completes three year will get Graduation and if completes four year will be awarded Graduation with Research. After completion of Graduation, if a student wants to pursue Post Graduation (PG), the post-graduation will be for one year. The M.Phil. which was earlier a prerequisite for PhD has now been eliminated. The Student interested in PhD can pursue the same after Graduation with Research and Post-graduation. CONCLUSION The literacy rate indicates the number of people above the age 15 years who can read and write and a lower literacy rate leads to low entrepreneurial activity and resulting in low economic growth. India is a country where even after more than 70 years after independence the literacy rate is around 75%. Though this literacy rate has grown in the last two decades however the literacy has to further grow and has to reach 100%. This is the reason why a good education policy is so important and how it can result in India’s economic growth in the future. https://edutrendschooling.blogspot.com/2020/08/education-policy-2020.html