NEP will be implemented in Nagaland in a gradual manner: Education department official

Kohima, Sep 29: The new National Education Policy (NEP) will be implemented in Nagaland in a gradual manner, a senior Education department official said.

Speaking at a webinar on "Impact of New Education Policy on Nagaland" organised by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) and Field Outreach Bureau on Monday, principal director of school education department Shanavas C said, "Nagaland is trying to implement the NEP but it cannot be done overnight due to the problem of connectivity".

He said the NEP will be implemented in Nagaland in a gradual manner. "Nagaland has 1,987 government schools from primary to secondary level, while the teacher-student ratio is 1:6, which is much higher than the national ratio of 1:16," he said.

The principal director said that in consonance with the new NEP the department has started the online portal for transfer of teachers and also would soon come out with the standards for opening of government school.

On the medium of instruction, which the new policy has put as mother tongue, he said "with Nagaland having at least 16 tribes with different languages, the medium of instruction would continue to remain English while one mother tongue subject of the preferred tribe would be introduced in the respective jurisdiction."

Director PIB Imphal, Abhishek Dayal said that New Education policy will greatly empower and benefit the students of the entire North East region and Nagaland in particular, because of the national standardisation, shift from rote learning to true understanding of subjects, creating better infrastructure and greater stress on building the capacity of teachers.

NEP comes at a time when digital learning is becoming more and more important and national and international standards are becoming uniform, he said.

Assistant Director, PIB Kohima K Sonikumar Singh said that PIB is hosting a series of webinars on NEP with a view to help better understanding of the policy better.