Understanding the urgency of foundational learning and multidisciplinary pedagogy, the Indian Government has recently revamped the ‘National Educational Policy (NEP)’. NEP seeks to provide a comprehensive framework for school and higher education in the country and thereby transform ‘India’ into an equitable and vibrant society of knowledge. The adoption of the New Education Policy 2020 is based on the motive of paving the way for transformational reforms in the existing educational systems and encouraging practical learning. NEP promises to address the three-fold problems of the Indian education system, namely — ‘Rote Learning’, ‘narrow intellectual and creative development’ and the ‘Disconnection between education and neo-skills’. In broader terms, NEP 2020 attempts to envision the following three important thematic developments:
– Shifting from content-driven (what to learn) curriculum to applied learning (how to learn).
– Designing a 360-degree assessment model that encompasses the educational, physical and mental well-being of the learner.
– Implementing the importance of ‘Experiential Learning’ through vocational skills, mathematical thinking and 21st-century skills. Seeing the idealistic vision and well-thought mechanism, it can be said that NEP policy has been introduced at the right time in the country. However, there lies a world of difference in laying down a policy on paper and following the same in reality. Also, the success and pace of its implementation will crucially depend on several factors such as — governmental regulations, caliber of teaching staff, technical knowledge, collaboration of stakeholders, consistency with pragmatism and ground realities. According to well-renowned education experts, the NEP policy is expected to be in complete operational mode by the decade 2030–40. Further they added that the NEP policy is not self-propelling in nature, thus requires strong political will and robust collaboration at all levels of management to operationalize the reforms. This clearly demonstrates that the policy would neither impact the existing structure of education system, nor prepare the current fraternity of students for future competition at universities and workplace.
In a broader context, let’s discuss the challenges faced by the existing Indian Education System and a few counter solutions that NEP has introduced to overcome these challenges. Further, we shall also review that how BeyondSkool’s integrated Program can act as an ‘Essential Half of the Education’, while making the entire ‘learning process’ more aligned and relevant to the demands of the future.
Learning Pedagogy: Since decades, the Indian Education System has been confined to a classroom teaching, ‘one-size-fits-all’ pedagogy, fixed hours of learning and unidirectional flow of communication. Under the NEP Policy, the student will have increased flexibility and choice of subjects — wherein there will be no rigid separation between vocational and academic streams. Further, ‘Life Skills Learning’ will be introduced in the curriculum along with academics, that would prepare the students to acquire neo-skills and build an ability to look at careers in the area of their passion. However, due to several political vagaries and external factors, the implementation of such curriculum and pedagogy seems unrealistic until the decade 2030. Thus, it is important for the students to engage with an effective and interactive platform — that could essentially cater their new-world needs and make them ready for future competition.
At BeyondSkool, we have already introduced ‘STEM’ and ‘STREAM’ subjects in the curriculum, that would focus on holistic development of learners and equip them with the key 21st century skills — Critical thinking, reasoning, collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving. BeyondSkool’s IQ+EQ+CQ integrated curriculum goes beyond the traditional models of learning, while helping the child to find their interests and push those abilities further. BeyondSkool’s integrated curricula and pedagogy aims at addressing intellectual, emotional and creative intelligence, rather than the verbal-linguistic and mathematical-logical skills which are primarily highlighted in schools.
Greater impetus on skill development: Several educationalists have acknowledged the futility of producing an army of unemployed youth through outdated curriculum and grade-based assessments. As a result, emulating the skill-based model of education and vocational courses are under the spotlight of the NEP policymakers. Additionally, this policy strongly focuses on shifting from ‘Rote Learning’ to ‘Experiential Learning’ — including hands-on learning, integrating sports education, and inculcating story-telling-based pedagogy. A skill-based curriculum empowers the child as readers, writers, critical thinkers and mathematicians, and thereby helps them to become creative, well-informed, passionate and joyful learners. While, at BeyondSkool, we already have a skill- based curriculum — that helps your child to ask questions, express themselves, collaborate with others, and take creative risks, while retaining their natural curiosity and creativity. BeyondSkool’s comprehensive and integrated ‘IQ+CQ+EQ’ curriculum features STEM and STREAM subjects like Science and technology, engineering, Logimath, applied math’s, reasoning and data interpretation. Such STEM and STREAM-based curriculum helps your child to develop spatial thinking, cognitive understanding and observational skills, while understanding the core of the subject and absorbing knowledge faster. In simpler words, at BeyondSkool, we believe that the new approach of skill-based learning from an early-age will help the learner to form a solid foundation for lifelong learning and critical abilities, while empowering them to become future-ready.
Robust Teacher Recruitment Process: In a traditional classroom arrangement, the teacher solely acts as ‘information provider’, rather than a ‘facilitator of learning and thinking process’. However, under NEP , there is a shift towards ‘Interactive teaching’ rather than ‘Textbook oriented’ techniques. Therefore, teachers (qualified candidates) have to improve their interactive skills, critical thinking and analytical understanding of the subject in order to impart education. Also, as the curriculum has been reduced to the core subjects, this means it will test the teacher’s basic concept in their respective field and ability to innovate new interactive methods. In short, aspiring teachers will have to be familiar and trained in foundational literacy and numeracy, multi-level teaching and evaluation, teaching children with special interests or talents and using educational technology.
Whereas, at BeyondSkool, the passionate educators are selected through a rigorous 5-step selection process and the shortlisted educator has to undergo a mandatory training of 30 hours, before taking the actual sessions with students. Additionally, as the student-teacher ratio is one of the strongest indicators of student’s academic success and knowledge retention, BeyondSkool features an impressive 1:4 teacher-student ratio against 1–60 in traditional schools. This means, while attending the BeyondSkool sessions, your child will receive individualized attention, study through inquiry-based learning, and get more one-to-one engagement. In short, while attending the sessions at BeyondSkool, your child would learn in much interactive, exploratory, collaborative, and experiential classroom setting.
The Bottom line:
Whether the ‘National Education Policy 2020’ gets implemented in the short run or not , but your child’s development should never stop! So, don’t let your child fall prey to existing education system that focuses only on ‘Rote Learning’ and ‘Mugging Bookish-knowledge’, while endangering their academic success and professional progress. Expand your child’s horizon with BeyondSkool — World’s 1st IQ+CQ+EQ Integrated curriculum with ‘Think & Create’ pedagogy. At BeyondSkool, we believe in empowering the student’s mind-set with ‘Imagination and Innovation’ through application-based learning, thought-provoking discussions, design thinking and creative approach. Additionally, at BeyondSkool, our home-based tasks and term-end capstone projects keeps an essential focus on a child’s ability to function as a group, learn the art of self-expression, interpersonal skills, and learn language, phonetics, motor movements, and physical expression. This clearly means that with BeyondSkool, you can be sure that your child is getting a great platform for neo-skills’ development and exceptional educational support — that which has quality, variety, and value that every young mind deserves!
So, let’s make a first step towards your child’s overall development and academic success with BeyondSkool and transform them from a ‘Passive Learner’ into ‘ Sharp Thinker and Innovator’. Book a free demo class for your child now.
