The National Educational Policy is an important document for

the future of education in India. Discuss 5 points in 750 words

that you want to additionally include in the NEP.

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to

think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true
education” – Martin Luther King
The future of a country is dependant upon the education of its youth and
hence it is of utmost importance to design the education structure
efficiently.

When I first read the National Education Policy back in 2020, I found it to
be next to perfect, without even questioning what was additionally
required. But when I utilised the green thinking hat- exploring a range of
ideas and thinking parallely, I observed that the NEP was missing on some
areas and required some additional measures. Firstly, the Indian education
system lacks financial literacy, the NEP 2020 lacks any measures in favour
of it too. The Indian education policy was formulated by the Britishers,
Lord Macaulay in specific, to produce clerks. The syllabus provided is
biased/inclined towards theoretical knowledge, whereas it should be more
practical so that it could help students in their life further. Schools in India
provide little to no know knowledge about financial literacy such as
investing, managing finances and so on. Financial knowledge, missing
from the education system, provides the real world knowledge and ensures
effective decisions with the financial resources, helping the student in his
future life. Hence, there should be more focus on financial literacy and it
should be compulsory for schools to hold financial literacy classes, at least
twice a month. Secondly, a single centralised board must be introduced.
There are various education boards in India- CBSE, ICSE, difference state
boards. A single education board enforces uniformity, reduces disparity,
and would provide equal opportunities to the students. NCERT is
prescribed by the National Committee, whereas most of the states demand
the SCERT curriculum which isn’t as competitive as other boards and at
the same time, is not of any great help in many competitive exams. Most
of the govt. exams are based on the CBSE syllabus that gives them an edge
over other state board students who are not attaining education of that
quality. Thirdly, the government must allow the students to pursue two full
time and same level degree programs simultaneously in physical mode.
NEP 2020 allows flexibility to choose subjects irrespective of the stream.
For instance, a high school student can choose the subject Economics at
the same time with Physics. For this to be effective, a student must have
the liberty to pursue two degrees (2 diff subject stream) simultaneously,
otherwise the flexibility provided in the school while choosing subjects
will not be of much use. At the same time, it will make the students more
competitive. Fourthly, as a critical thinker believing in equality and
fairness, the provision of reservation in education should be removed.
Reservation in education has led to brain drain and many undeserving
students are being rewarded and talent being wasted. Taking the eg of
IIMs from the white hat perspective, 64.5% seats are reserved (OBC-27%,
SC- 15%, ST- 7.5%, PwD- 5%, EWS- 10%) and a lot of deserving general
category candidates miss out. Moreover, there are different cutoffs for
different sections in examinations such as CAT. The system is responsible
for destroying meritocracy and the talented people migrate to other
countries. For that reason, reservation in education must be abolished.
Lastly, there must be an addition to the evaluation system in schools. As a
critical thinker, one must focus on the all round development of a child,
not confining it to a single parameter. The evaluation system should not
only be based on examination marks, but also be based on other
parameters such as co-curricular and extracurricular activities. This will
upgrade the skill set of a student. Moreover, the student must be motivated
to go for ‘Work (part-time) with Study’. This will provide the student the
required exposure and the experience of the real world. So, including
activities such as sports, work with studies, other extracurricular activities
and evaluating them on the mentioned factors will lead to the all round
development of a child and not restrict it to be a bookworm solely.

To sum up, these are the measures that I believe should be added in the
New Education Policy and the critical thinking tools helped me to better
analyze the topic.