The primary objective for senior students is to create well-rounded individuals with a strong foundation in academics, skills and values. NEP aims to equip students to meet the challenges of the 21st century and become responsible citizens by emphasizing the following:

Holistic development

• Prioritizing life skills: NEP promotes the development of students’ life skills, critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving abilities.
• Focus on arts and humanities: A balanced curriculum includes arts, humanities and social sciences to broaden students’ perspectives.
• Physical education and well-being: Mandatory physical education and wellness programmes for overall well-being of students.

Examination reforms

• Reduced board exams: The importance of board exams is reduced with a focus on students’ continuous evaluation.
• Multiple assessment methods: A variety of assessment methods will be used to evaluate students’ performance.

Higher education integration

• Early exposure to higher education: NEP aims to bridge the gap between school and higher education through early exposure of students to university-level courses.
• Multiple entry and exit options: Students will have more flexibility in choosing their educational path with options for early entry and exit.

No silos

National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 aims to revolutionize education by breaking down silos and promoting interdisciplinary learning. By empowering students to choose their academic paths based on their interests and aspirations, the policy seeks to create a dynamic and flexible learning environment. To achieve this, the curriculum will be revamped to incorporate 21st-century skills like artificial intelligence, design thinking, and global citizenship. Mathematics education will undergo a transformation by emphasizing practical application from the foundational years onwards. Higher education will move away from isolated subject teaching towards a holistic, multidisciplinary approach.

NCrF – The game changer in school education

Indian Education system is currently in a state of flux. It would not be an exaggeration to say that school education particularly, is in its most transformative stage since the inception of NEP 2020.With a clear impetus on enhanced flexibility for learners , skill development, technological upgradation , cultural rootedness and multidisciplinary approach, NEP 2020 is a strong vision statement for an India that belongs to the future, an India that aspires to be an economic superpower by 2047 and an India that would balance equity and equality for a more inclusive educational landscape.

NEP 2020 talks of integration of general and vocational education and for a country which presently boasts of a young population and is in a state of reaping benefits of the demographic dividend, this integration becomes more important than ever. Let’s figure this out with the statistics from ILO which says that the youth population in the country will dip to 23 per cent by 2036, from 27 per cent in 2021. The Economic Survey 2018-19 says that the dividend would be at its highest around 2041 when the working age population would be 59 per cent of India’s population. We have to understand that there is no automatic advantage flowing out of this high percentage of working age population. This can be a liability as well as an asset. If judicious investments are made in the youth of the country by means of educating and skilling them, bridging the gap between formal academic education and vocational education and creating opportunities for them to encash all kinds of learning, we sure are in safe territory. This is exactly where National Credit Framework comes into picture. NCrF provides for creditisation of all learning and aims to establish equivalence between academic and vocational streams and mobility across the two for learners.

National Credit Framework is the umbrella framework that will seamlessly integrate and quantify all learning including school education, vocational & skill education and higher education. Keeping school education as the focus of my present writing, let’s navigate through this whole system of creditisation of learning at school level.

The very basic entity to be understood here is “Credit”. Credit refers to a numerical unit by which a particular coursework is measured. Credit is awarded to a learner only after successful completion of a stipulated number of learning hours in a given course which are pre-defined and which have been completed by the learner after due assessment of the competencies acquired in the specified course. Let’s take for instance a coursework on French Revolution in the History Curriculum of Grade 9. It takes typically 10-11 hours to complete this coursework. Now if we assign 1 credit to these 11 hours , what this would mean for the learner? To earn this 1 credit, the learner has to complete the eleven hours associated with this module and he/she will be assigned this 1 credit only after successful assessment of learning outcomes. The assessment can be a mix of formative and summative.

Coming back to how the actual NCrF is expected to work at the school level, the total Notional Learning Hours for assignment of credits across school education, higher education and vocational education are 1200 Hrs per year for which the learners shall be awarded 40 Credits. For the purpose of credit calculations under National Credit Framework (NCrF), 30 notional learning hours will be counted as one Credit. If the learners take up additional courses, they get to earn additional credits as well beyond the 40 credits.

Flexibility is the hallmark of NCrF. The 1200 notional learning hours to be completed in a given academic session across subjects are a mix of classroom teaching, field work, school trips, extracurricular activities including debates, art exhibitions, assignments , yoga, internships , sports, Online courses, community work etc. One can easily realise that while assigning credits , there is no hard separation between different areas of learning. This is where the wall between academic and vocational learning collapses much to the learner’s respite and the learning shifts from rote to competency based.

The NCrF credit levels for school education are upto level 4 spanning across foundational stage, preparatory stage, middle stage and secondary stage, while for higher education from Level 4.5. to level 8 (Under Graduate Levels 4.5, 5.0, 5.5 & 6.0, Post Graduate Levels 6.0, 6.5 & 7.0, and PhD Level 8) and for vocational education & training level 1 to level 8.

Where do these credits earned get accumulated? NEP 2020 has proposed ABC which stands for Academic Bank of Credit. Every credit earned by the student right through school education till higher education including vocational & skill education is accumulated in the ABC which is linked with digilocker.

“One of the major advantages of the national credit framework will be to enable establishment of eligibility criteria for various qualifications being implemented both in general education and vocational education and training/ skilling in terms of accumulated credit points at certain credit levels. These credit points can be used to determine the eligibility for taking admission in various programs at multiple levels, subject to fulfilment of the broad principles laid down under National Credit Framework (NCrF) and the acceptance of the credit points by the concerned agencies. This mobility will be an outcome of the equivalence that is established between general and vocational education and training/ skilling based on the criterion laid by NCrF without the need for further certification of equivalence of academic qualifications of students.”

The Report of the High-Level Inter-Ministerial Committee on National Credit Accumulation & Transfer Framework September 2022

National Credit Framework with its dynamic and student centric approach is bound to bring a paradigm shift in attitudes towards learning and assessment of learning.

In terms of school education, where does NCrF currently stand today?

CBSE has proposed a pilot implementation of NCrF in select schools in the session 2024-25  across the length and breadth of the country. These schools will then be the pioneer trainers with empowered teachers and learners.

DPS, Greater Fraidabad-81 is one of the schools chosen for this pilot implementation!

Any policy is as good as its implementation. When it comes to to NCrF, its success will see the light of the day only on the strength of partnership among schools, agencies, students, educators and parents. Hopeful and positive we are as ever.