TS stands at crossroads in NEP implementation

Hyderabad: Uncertainty continues over the implementation of the New Education Policy -2020 (NEP-2020) in Telangana even after four years of the notification of the new policy and the University Grants Commission (UGC), All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) have already been taking a series of steps to implement it.

Barring a few States, the new initiatives of the apex regulators in higher education have already been impacting the Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in management, technical, legal, agriculture and other streams. Delayed decisions in rolling out NEP-2020 might impact students in terms of parity with their counterparts calls for a decision on the part of the State government, says a senior professor from the Osmania University.

"State has a major say and key responsibilities to play when it comes to education. However, when a national policy becomes a reality and implemented by the majority of the States, others need to take a call as early as possible, because it impacts the institutions and lakhs of students," says another senior faculty member from the Social Sciences of OU.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior State Higher Education Department (SHED), said the file related to the NEP-2020 has been slogging for the past several years with the State government.

"During the earlier government, there was no response as to NEP-2020 implementation. Initially, the sense given was to oppose it. But, later given the policy impacts there were steps taken to implement several of NEP-2020 components."

The recent State government announcement to appoint a commission on education only causes further delay, feels academicians. "There are any number of education commissions appointed both by the States and the Centre in last 70 years covering from primary education to different fields of higher education. There is enough data available to cross-check with NEP-2020 to take a call than re-inventing the wheel," said a former vice-chancellor of a State university.

Four years since notification of NEP-2020 and only two months left for the new academic year to begin, Telangana stands at a crossroads with uncertainty about NEP-2020. At a time the changes taking place are going to be substantial, like the initiatives to re-shape the agricultural universities into multi-disciplinary universities (MU) rather than retaining single-stream universities (SSUs). Also, there is an increasing stress laid and steps are initiated for a complete overhaul of the regulatory system at all levels, as per NEP-2020. This includes bringing all regulatory frameworks under one umbrella by forming a new Higher Education Commission of India (HECI).