NEP implementation to be challenging, says Dr. Yhome

KOHIMA— The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) should take challenges faced by Nagaland into consideration while implementing the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 in the state, said Advisor of School Education and State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Dr. Kekhrielhoulie Yhome.

He was addressing the inaugural programme of the four-day regional workshop on a ‘Study on school assessments and examination practices and equivalence of boards’, organised by the PARAKH in collaboration with the Nagaland Board of School Education (NBSE) in Kohima, on Monday.

Asserting that the NEP 2020 focuses on vocational education, he urged the members to take cognizance of the vocational diversity in the state. He added that schools in the state are struggling to find vocational teachers to impart indigenous skilling practices to students, as it requires resources.
The advisor pointed out that language is another challenge faced by the state, as there are more than 20 languages in Nagaland alone, making it difficult to implement the mother tongue-based education as envisaged by the NEP 2020.

He opined that the NCERT should be more open to the ideas and have an open access policy.

Since its establishment in 1974, the NBSE has been functioning with best practices and a lot of structural changes had taken place over the years, the advisor said, adding that the board has come a long way, facing a lot of structural challenges. 

Highlighting the purpose of the programme, Professor MV Srinivasan, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), said the main intention of the workshop was to understand how the state boards are functioning.

‘The workshop, mostly based on the questionnaire method, has been designed to understand each other, understand how school is performing and understand as a society. This is because there is no sufficient publication and information from the boards. Therefore, the team is trying to understand from the board perspective,’ he said.

He informed that similar workshop had been conducted in the past and the ongoing seminar in Nagaland is the fourth one. After collecting data, it would see the possibilities of working together towards helping the society and to upgrade in order to help the students and the society.

NBSE Chairman, Asano Sekhose said the National Assessment Centre — Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH) — as a standard-setting body with the basic objectives of setting norms, standards and guidelines for students’ assessment and evaluation for all recognised school boards of India, has conducted the workshop on time.

She added that it will enable the Boards share its best practices to ensure equivalence of academic standards among learners across all school boards.

She said the focus of assessment and examination is now shifting to competency-based testing, testing of core concepts and knowledge, higher order skills and its application in real-life situation, moving away from rote learning.

How the assessments are conducted is going to determine the classroom teaching in schools, she said while expressing hope that all stakeholders can bring about positive changes in its assessment practices and make the examination more relevant and credible for the learners.

‘The NEP 2020 recommends assessments to be student-friendly with greater flexibility to give young people more opportunities to improve their performance in the examinations. In this regard, the Board has revised its X existing rules to align with NEP 2020 recommendations by incorporating new provisions in the conduct of examinations to make the assessment more student-friendly,’ she added.

Iluheing Nsarangbe, Joint Secretary of NBSE, informed that 159 private schools and 97 government schools under Samagra Shiksha have currently opted vocational education (VE). This is towards achieving the target of providing vocational education to at least 50% of the students in the school and higher education system by 2025, in accordance with the NEP 2020.

He also said that the Financial Literacy Certificate course was introduced in 2016 in collaboration with the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE) in classes 9 and 10. It has been made mandatory for all registered schools of the Board to introduce the course from this year, he added.

The workshop, which aimed at addressing the challenges and explore potential solutions related to the varying quality and standardisation of educational boards across the country, was attended by representatives from Nagaland, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura states, as well as officials from the Council for Indian Certificate Examination, National Institute of Open Schooling, and NCERT.