The Union Cabinet on Wednesday cleared the New Education Policy (NEP), 2020, that aims to overhaul the country’s education system.

Union Ministers for Information and Broadcasting (I&B) and Human Resource Development (HRD) Prakash Javadekar and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, respectively, will make the announcement shortly on the NEP, 2020.

The new academic session will begin in September-October – the delay is due to the unprecedented coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak – and the government aims to introduce the policy before the new session kicks in.

Earlier on May 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had reviewed the NEP, 2020, whose draft was prepared by a panel of experts led by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Kasturirangan.

Concerns were raised by some non-Hindi-speaking states about the imposition of Hindi, which the HRD ministry has assured would be addressed.

The government had said the focus was on bringing uniformity in education, providing universal access to quality education, improving the quality of elementary education through a new national curriculum framework that focuses on multi-linguistic, 21st-century skills, integration of sports and arts, environmental issues, etc.

The use and promotion of technology in various modes for education at school and higher levels were also discussed threadbare.

Officials, however, did not elaborate if the lessons learned during the Covid-19 phase would be added to the policy.

However, the HRD ministry is said to have laid more emphasis on digital teaching modes as the key learning from the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak.

The draft policy has also suggested that the HRD ministry be rechristened as the Education ministry.

Also read: Moderna vaccine protects 16 monkeys from coronavirus; 30,000 humans await