Rajasthan leaves its mark on New Education Policy

JAIPUR: Rajasthan has proved to be a leader in terms of education reforms in the country as the New Education Policy (NEP) introduced on Wednesday included many suggestions made by the former BJP government in state.
Former state education minister Vasudev Devnani, who was core member of the Central Advisory Board Education (CABE), an apex body of HRD ministry formed to give suggestions for NEP, said that many of the key highlights of the NEP were his ideas.
“I was part of many long discussions with the HRD minister in New Delhi and made him understand the importance of the suggestions. One of the key suggestions that we gave was to bring all the higher education institutes in the country under one umbrella. This has been introduced as Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) in NEP,” said Devnani.
The new policy mentions the framework of 5+3+3+4 years with a strong base of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) from three years of age, which was suggested by the former BJP government as well. To encourage the use of mother tongue, Devnani had suggested that the medium of education should be in it, which has been implemented in NEP for students till class V.
Devnani explained, “In NEP, Centre has introduced ‘school exams’ in Class III, V, VIII along with the board exams in classes X and XII, which we suggested. Even before the recommendations were accepted by the Central government, Rajasthan had already started conducting board exams for classes V, VIII, X and XII, although no student is declared pass or fail in class V and VIII.”