By: Rinku R.
When the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was unveiled, it carried the weight of history and hope. It was the first comprehensive education policy of the 21st century, promising to move India away from rote learning toward creativity, flexibility, and inclusion. Five years on, the question is unavoidable: how much of NEP 2020 has reached the classroom, and how much remains confined to policy documents and conference presentations?
The answer, predictably, lies somewhere in between.
There is no denying that NEP 2020 altered the language of education reform. Terms like “competency-based learning,” “multidisciplinary education,” “experiential learning,” and “holistic assessment” are now part of everyday official discourse. Teacher training modules, curriculum frameworks, and university prospectuses echo this new vocabulary. In that sense, NEP has succeeded in shifting the conversation. But shifting classrooms is a harder task.
What Has Actually Changed
The most visible change has been structural. The 10+2 system has formally given way to the 5+3+3+4 design, at least on paper, signalling greater attention to early childhood education. Several states have expanded pre-primary schooling and attempted to align Anganwadis with formal learning goals. In higher education, multiple entry and exit options, Academic Bank of Credits, and multidisciplinary course offerings have begun to reshape university regulations.
Assessment practices, too, show early signs of movement. Boards and schools increasingly speak of reducing syllabus load and focusing on learning outcomes. Some classrooms now experiment with projects, presentations, and open-ended questions. The pandemic, paradoxically, accelerated digital adoption, making blended learning a practical reality rather than a theoretical ideal.
Perhaps most importantly, NEP has given institutional legitimacy to reforms that many teachers had long advocated. Ideas that once sounded radical—flexible subject choices, vocational exposure, formative assessment—now carry official sanction.
What Remains Largely on Paper
Yet, for all this progress, the everyday classroom experience for most students remains stubbornly familiar. Rote learning still dominates, especially in examination-driven classes. Textbooks may have new forewords, but teaching practices are often unchanged. Large class sizes, rigid timetables, and syllabus completion pressures leave little room for experimentation.
Teacher preparation remains the policy’s weakest link. NEP places enormous responsibility on teachers—mentor, facilitator, assessor, innovator—but provides uneven support to help them transition. In-service training is often episodic and generic, not sustained or subject-specific. Without deep pedagogical investment, competency-based education risks becoming a slogan rather than a practice.
Equity gaps have also proven resistant. NEP’s promise of inclusion—through digital learning, regional languages, and flexible pathways—has collided with ground realities of infrastructure shortages, digital divides, and uneven state capacity. For many rural and government schools, the challenge is still access to basic resources, not pedagogical innovation.
In higher education, autonomy and multidisciplinary education have expanded faster in well-funded institutions than in average colleges. Multiple exit options exist, but questions remain about their academic and labour-market value. Here too, reform has been uneven, benefiting those already better positioned.
The Deeper Tension
At its core, NEP 2020 faces a familiar Indian policy dilemma: ambition without adequate execution capacity. The policy imagines flexible, learner-centred classrooms within a system still governed by high-stakes exams, bureaucratic compliance, and chronic underinvestment. Teachers are asked to personalise learning while managing overcrowded classrooms. Universities are encouraged to innovate while navigating centralised regulation.
NEP did not—and perhaps could not—resolve this contradiction. It offered a vision without fully dismantling the structures that resist that vision.
A Balanced Assessment
To be fair, education reform is inherently slow. Five years is a short span in a system serving millions of learners across diverse contexts. NEP 2020 has laid an important foundation: it has redefined goals, legitimised reformist ideas, and opened policy space for change. That, in itself, is no small achievement.
But policies do not teach children; teachers do. Classrooms do not transform through circulars alone; they change through sustained investment, trust, and support at the ground level.
The Road Ahead
As NEP enters its second half-decade, the challenge is no longer articulation but implementation with honesty. This means prioritising teacher capacity over cosmetic compliance, reducing exam pressure alongside curriculum reform, and recognising that one-size-fits-all timelines do not work in a federal system.
The real test of NEP 2020 will not be how eloquently it is cited, but how quietly it reshapes everyday teaching and learning. Until then, the policy will remain what it is today: a bold blueprint—partly built, partly waiting.
