Education is essential for accomplishing full human potential, fostering an impartial community, and encouraging the development of the nation as a whole. Providing universal admittance to qualitative education is important for India’s ascent, and leadership regarding economic development, logical progression, and cultural safeguarding.
These days the world is going through quick changes including different types of scientific and technological improvement, for example, artificial intelligence and man brainpower. Numerous jobs globally taken over by machines, need for extraordinarily skilled workers especially in math, software engineering, and information science, related to multidisciplinary capacities across technical disciplines, sociologies, and humanities, would be progressively in more prominent interest.
Education accordingly, should move towards less theoretical and more creative learning, and adapt and retain new thoughts. Dass & Brown World School, Ferozpur, one of the best CBSE school in Punjab tries to build the bridge to cover the gap between present situations and the future from early childhood to higher studies.
Changes made in curriculum and pedagogy in schools according to National Education Policy (NEP 2020) are:
1. Restructuring school curriculum and pedagogy in a new 5+3+3+4 design
The curriculum and pedagogical structure of education will be reconstructed to create education more responsive and applicable to the formative necessities and interests of students through various levels of development context to ages of 3-8, 8-11, 11-14, and 14-18 years, individually. Directed to by a 5+3+3+4 design, comprising:
• Foundational Stage – In two parts, 3 years of Anganwadi/pre-school + 2 years in primary school in Grades 1-2; both together covering ages 3-8 (will consist of five years of flexible, multilevel, play/activity-based learning).
• Preparatory Stage – Grades 3-5, covering ages 8-11 (will comprise three years of education building on the play, discovery, and activity-based pedagogical).
• Middle Stage – Grades 6-8, covering ages 11-14 (will comprise three years of education with learning and discussion of the more abstract concepts in each subject that students will be ready for at this stage across the sciences, mathematics, arts, social sciences, and humanities).
• Secondary Stage – Grades 9-12 in two phases, i.e., 9 and 10 in the first and 11 and 12 in the second, covering ages 14-18 (will comprise four years of multidisciplinary study with greater depth, critical thinking, greater attention to life aspirations, and greater flexibility and student choice of subjects).
• The above-portrayed stages are curricular and instructive, intended to improve learning for students based on cognitive development.
2. Holistic development of learners
The new policy approach underscores the all-encompassing improvement of children and the curriculum. The policy not only plans to cover cognitive development but also holistic development for the 21st century. Explicit arrangements of abilities and values across various domains will be made for combination and association at every level of education. NCERT will distinguish these necessary ranges of skills incorporated in the National Curriculum Framework.
3. Reduce curriculum content to enhance essential learning and critical thinking
Content in the curriculum will be shortlisted as it has become essential for the children to develop critical thinking and more holistic, discussion-based more comprehensive learning. Classroom study will direct to less content and more intensive, idea-based, and creative activities for better and more focused learning of students.
4. Experiential learning
The educational motive of the NEP is to shift towards experiential learning and training. The experiential learning approach will include art and craft integration, sports integration, storytelling, etc.
• Art integration is a cross-curricular instructive methodology that acquires different perspectives and types of culture as the reason for learning ideas across subjects. This will reinforce the link between education and culture.
• Sports integration is another cross-curricular academic methodology that uses proactive tasks such as physical activities, in creating abilities like coordination, self-confidence, self-control, responsibility, equality, collaboration, etc.
5. Empower students through flexibility in course choices
Students will be empowered through increased flexibility and selection of subjects to learn, especially in secondary school subjects for actual training, artistic expression and specialties, and vocational skills so they can choose their journey and plans. Every level of school education may shift towards a semester or any other framework that permits which incorporate limited modules, to offer openness to additional subjects and greater flexibility.
6. Multilingualism and the power of language
The local language will be taught in every possible field and in public, private schools. Excellent course books, counting science, will be made accessible in the mother /primary language. Efforts will be made to secure a bridge to be built on every gap between the medium of teaching and mother tongue of the learner.
• There will be a significant exertion from both the Central and State governments to put resources into huge quantities of language teachers in the nation, for all languages mentioned Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India.
• The three-language formula should be followed, keeping in mind constitutional provisions, districts, and the association, and the need to prevail in unity. The languages offered to the students will be a choice of states, districts and obviously, the actual students themselves, so long as at least two of the three are local to India.
• All efforts will be made in getting ready excellent bilingual study materials for science and maths, so as to empower them to think and talk about the two subjects both in their mother tongue and in English.
• Every student in the nation will take part in a project on ‘The Languages of India’, at some point in Grades 6-8, for example, under the ‘Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat’ drive. Understudies will find out about the noteworthy solidarity of the greater part of the significant Indian languages, beginning with their normal phonetic and experimentally organized letter sets and scripts, their origins, and traditional vocabularies.
• Sanskrit will accordingly be presented at all levels of school and advanced education as a significant, including as an option in the three-language formula.
• For the enhancement of the children, and for the protection of these languages, their creative fortunes will have the choice of atlases two years of traditional languages and their related information.
• Some foreign languages, such as Korean, Japanese, Thai, French, German, Spanish, etc. will likewise be presented at the auxiliary stage, to connect students with the history and traditions of the world.
• Indian Sign Language (ISL) will be temper in the National and State curriculum materials for children suffering from hearing disabilities.
7. Curricular integration of essential subjects, skills, and capacities
Children must have flexibility with the languages, essential subjects, skills, and capacities such as, creativity and imagination, artistic, composed correspondence, well-being and sustenance, ports, coordinated effort and collaboration, critical thinking computerized education and coding, citizenship abilities and values, disinfection and cleanliness and many more to become successful, innovative, and productive human in today’s rapidly changing world.
8. National textbooks with local content and flavor
Textbooks and other study materials will be available at the least possible cost in order to reduce the economic weight on the students and their guardians. Changes according to the new education policy will be made in the study material.
9. Transforming assessment for student development
The main role of evaluation will surely be for learning, and the education system will keep an eye on processes to calculate the overall development of students. The progress card of all students will be totally overhauled by States/UTs under the direction of the proposed National Assessment Centre, NCERT, and SCERTs. Board exams will be redesigned to make it simple for the students to test their essential capabilities.
10. Support for gifted students/students with special talents
Efforts towards encouraging these special students for studies and other development will be made.