Anganwadis to be integrated with department of School Education under NEP

Our Correspondent
Dimapur, Sep. 28 (EMN): The National Education Policy (NEP) will allow Nagaland to revamp its education infrastructure in a comprehensive manner.

‘With the NEP, a child is now going to start formal system of education from an age of three and this is going to help the rural children who used to start proper education at a much later age; and so the main challenge is integrating the anganwadis to the department of School Education, and integrating it into the early childhood and education of five years,’ Shanavas C, Principal Director of School Education stated.

He was speaking at the webinar on “National Education Policy- An overview and Its implementation in Nagaland”, jointly organised by Press Information Bureau(PIB), Kohima and Field Outreach Bureau, Kohima, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, on September 28.

He said that under the NEP there will be an integration of anganwadis with early learning and an extension of mid-day meal to higher classes. He added that implementation of NEP will last for over 10 years but ‘we have to meet some of the targets by 2030.’ He also stressed on how the state government will also take the help of NGOs in augmenting the teaching quality through teachers’ training and developing teaching literature in local languages.

He also said that Nagaland has around 16 dialects and so one of the textbooks will be in mother tongue as a subject paper starting from lower classes, but the medium of communication will continue in English. He informed that they have requested the same from the ministry for our state.
‘We have developed a mobile app for teachers where they can directly communicate with the district and state headquarters and also we will be able to monitor them and their postings through the teachers diary and teacher application,’ he added.

‘Together we can make this education policy a success in our state, and we have to make use of the opportunity and whatever issues we have in our education policy, we need to correct them,’ he concluded.

Abhishek Dayal, director of PIB Imphal, in his keynote address also stressed on how local media should partner with implementing agencies to understand the requirements and the nuances at the ground level, ‘so that it will create an atmosphere where people are hooked on the idea and also so that our youths will get maximum benefits out of this reforms.’
He added that the ‘competition for our youth is not regional but global and so the very fact that the national education system strives for uniformity in standardisation helps the erstwhile backward regions catch up faster. It is imperative that the state government and the implementing agencies hand hold the stakeholders for smooth transition,’ he said.

K. Sonikumar Singh, assistant director, PIB Kohima welcomed the participants stating that PIB is hosting a series of webinars on NEP with a view to help the media and common people understand the policy better. He hoped that the media will generate awareness around the issue so that people are able to quickly utilise the new opportunities.

The webinar was attended by over 25 officials of the North East zone, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, members of the media, teaching profession and officials of the state government.