Mr. Aarul Malaviya is the Founder & Director of Zamit, a game-changer Ed-tech firm in the industry, focused on building future-ready generations in the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world. Aarul belongs to Gen Z who thinks beyond the obvious, explores the unexpected, and ideates extraordinary concepts for Zamit. He has replaced the standard quotient mapping with the modern-age ZQ (Zamit Quotient). He has completed his graduation from Winchester University, England, with a specialization in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). He also looks after the UI/UX aspects of the company.
With the introduction of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the Indian education system has taken a departure from the norm and bagged an effective tool to deal with unprecedented educational emergencies. Being the most reformative step in the history of the education industry, the NEP 2020 emphasises laying the foundation of skill education, project-based learning and character development and focuses on concepts and their applications rather than on rote learning alone. Doing that helps prepare a generation of future-ready, resilient and socially aware 21st-century global citizens.
What are Educational Emergencies?
Educational emergencies can be defined as obstacles delaying the effective implementation of any educational reform. Recently, the pandemic has been the most alarming educational emergency in the world that highlighted the importance of addressing the challenges and drawbacks in our education system. During the COVID pandemic, private schools in India quickly shifted to online learning while the public education system came to a standstill in many parts of the country. All these led to many students being forced to interrupt their studies. Emergencies like this reverse the desired outcomes of an education policy. Not just the pandemic or wars, but several other situations directly impact the education system of a country.
The Role of the NEP in Tackling Educational Emergencies
About 220 million schoolchildren got affected during the coronavirus pandemic as a direct result of schools being shut for over 18 months. This had a major impact on the student's education. This 18-month gap needs to be addressed comprehensively and quickly as it could harm an entire generation of young learners and the country itself. The quick implementation of the relevant parts of the NEP by each Indian state could certainly provide some effective measures to deal with such an emergency.
Here is a list of a few of the most important ones:
Firstly, the NEP 2020 employs a methodical approach to address the difficulties related to the fundamental literacy and numeracy issues of the population that existed before the pandemic. It also provides a detailed framework for solving the learning crisis that emerged during COVID.
Secondly, the new National Curricular Framework (NCF) is set to focus on making learning less burdensome and project-based instead of rote learning. In a time of learning crisis, we must reconfigure and cut down the syllabus to its core in order to meet essential curricular goals.
Thirdly, the very approach to education in higher secondary classes (i.e. classes 9 – 12) is set to be modified in order to enable these students to graduate future-ready and without any learning deficits.
Once implemented, the NEP 2020 will not only transform the education system of the country for good but will also help us deal with the loss of learning the pandemic caused.
