Education Ministry Reforms: Unfinished NEP 2020 Agenda and Challenges Ahead

Education Ministry Reforms Latest News

• Union Minister Pralhad Joshi took additional charge of the Ministry of Education, succeeding Dharmendra Pradhan. 
• He inherits a wide range of structural education reforms initiated under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, many of which remain works-in-progress.

Context: Pradhan’s Tenure

• Dharmendra Pradhan’s five-year tenure focused on ramping up implementation of NEP 2020, which the Union Cabinet had approved a year before he took charge.
• His education reforms shared common threads: performance evaluation and accountability, skilling-education convergence, promotion of a particular vision of “Indianness,”.
• However, his ambitious goals were undercut by implementation gaps, and a push for uniformity that critics termed centralisation disregarding diversity.

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Foundational Literacy: Nipun Bharat

• Launched to address pandemic-era learning losses, Nipun Bharat aims to ensure every child attains foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27 — a core NEP recommendation.
• Progress: ASER 2024 showed a 7-percentage-point gain in numeracy since 2018. PARAKH 2024 found Grade 3 students benefiting from the mission’s first three years outperformed Grades 6 and 9 in language and math.
• Gaps remain: Fewer than a quarter of students nationally could read a Grade 2-level text, and Grade 5 reading levels remained roughly at pre-pandemic levels — signalling implementation shortfalls that may necessitate a “Nipun Bharat 2.0.”

Teacher Quality Initiatives

• National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST): India’s first initiative to assess and classify teachers as proficient, expert, or advanced against uniform national standards, with career progression tied to this ladder. Not yet rolled out.
• National Mentoring Mission: Aims to identify mentor teachers to guide others up this ladder via online sessions. However, awareness among India’s 1 crore teachers remains low, and impact assessments are yet to be formalised. 
• Since NPST itself hasn’t launched, teachers have little incentive to engage with mentoring sessions.

Higher Education Reforms

• Controversial UGC changes
  • The 2025 draft UGC regulations on appointing teachers, Vice-Chancellors, and staff faced strong opposition — particularly for giving governors a decisive say in Vice-Chancellor appointments and for removing the cap on contractual professorships.
  • New UGC undergraduate/postgraduate degree rules — built around flexibility and multidisciplinarity — have been formally in force since the 2025 academic year.
  • However, institutions are still struggling with concepts like a commerce student studying science, or transferring credits via the National Credit Framework.
• Education-skilling convergence
  • Swayam Plus platform offers over 500 industry-developed courses across 15 sectors, including emerging technologies, with 6.5 lakh registrations.
  • New “AI for All” modules (AI for Physics, AI for Chemistry, AI in Accounting, AI for Educators, AI/ML using Python) have drawn 1 lakh registrations.
  • Key gaps: State university-affiliated colleges remain resistant to flexible credit systems, and there is minimal funding allocated to State universities to implement such flexibility.
  • The proposed Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill, meant to replace the UGC, notably lacks a grant-giving function — a core UGC role.

The Three-Language Policy Controversy

• Pradhan pushed NEP adoption — particularly the three-language formula — by tying central funding for primary education schemes to state compliance.
• Tamil Nadu remains a holdout, though West Bengal’s new government has accepted it.
• In CBSE schools, Pradhan mandated learning two Bharatiya languages from Classes 6 to 12, prioritising Indian languages over English.
• Some relief was granted to current students, but the government has held firm on this as the norm going forward — even though NEP itself, while championing Indian languages, simultaneously emphasises learning English and other foreign languages.

Conclusion

• Pralhad Joshi takes charge of an education agenda rich in ambition but uneven in execution — from foundational literacy gains undercut by persistent learning gaps, to higher education reforms hampered by funding shortfalls, to a language policy facing continued federal pushback. 
• Carrying these reforms to genuine completion, rather than just headline announcements, will define the next chapter of India’s education transformation.

Source: TH | TI