India. The Changing Landscape of Education: Opportunities and Challenges

India is a very fast emerging country in the field of education. We have raised our literacy rate from 12% during the times of independence to 75% in the present day. Like all the other sectors, India’s education sector also flourished a lot and played an important role in our sustainable development. 

Image Source: REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas

As for making systems invulnerable, they need to be updated with the passing of time, in the same way our education system also went through various changes, for example it became more digitalised, student friendly etc. 

The changes in our education system saw the biggest changes in the year 2020, as the system of Online Classes was popularized and even the new education policy was introduced in the same year.  

Today our classes have moved from chalkboard to chat boards, from blackboards to smartboards, and from marks prioritizing to skill and knowledge prioritizing. These all factors have enhanced our education system and made it very effective. 

The New Education Policy 

The new education policy of 2020, revolutionized our education policy, it made education in India more skill based and provided umpteen  opportunities to the youth. The policy gave the opportunity of taking coding and other high skilled subjects on their course to increase the scientific temper of the students. 

The policy also aimed to reduce the difference between the various streams of education, so that students do not remain untouched with other fields. The policy also divided board examination into 2 categories, one was subjective and other was objective. This made students prepare and ready for other competitive exams. 

For higher education, the policy focussed very much on E-Learning, making it available on regional languages also. It also set up a common entrance exam system for all the colleges and the National Testing Authority was assigned with the task of doing it. 

The Major Opportunities

Convenience was the biggest opportunity given to us by NEP, the concept of Online Classes allowed us to attend our classes from our home. 

New job options such as developer, coder etc were introduced. The policy also aimed to establish world’s top universities in India to increase the ease of taking world class education. 

Challenges Before our Education System

The first challenge of our education policy is the implementation of new Pan-India policies, as our population is very huge it is very difficult for any system to be implemented on everyone effectively. 

The second challenge is the difference in gender ratio of students, even today girls are demoted from education by their parents in rural areas. The third basic challenge is to make the poor students take all the profits of the new education policy, as subjects like coding can add extra expenses on students, these expenses are no big deal for the rich students but are a massive hurdle for economically weaker students. 

The biggest challenge that our education system is facing now is the rising ‘Communalism’ in the mass. Today the divine education sectors are victims of religious politics and hatred. We have seen issues like the Karnataka Hijab controversy recently. Awful events like this pose a threat to our education system and as a result many students leave their education at an early stage.

Conclusion

New policies and new changes all will go in vain if they are not well implemented and should be easy to use for all. For this, laws should be good practically more than being good on paper. Still we can hope for a bright future for our education sector, and if everything goes on in the best way possible, then our dream of achieving 100% literacy rate will come true. 

Citations

https://www.education.gov.in/en/nep-new

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15228053.2017.1345214

https://www.edumpus.com/blog/How-Indian-education-has-changed-over-the-years#:~:text=Since%20its%20independence%2C%20India’s%20literacy,to%20date%20with%20their%20progress.

https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/five-challenges-that-would-shape-the-outcome-of-nep-2020/

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