Reality check: Has the post-NEP classroom really changed?

Between reading and doing

There’s a gap between what NEP says and what schools do with what NEP says. Most NEP-aligned schools have updated curricula. New subject combinations, greater flexibility and better teacher training are in place. But ask a student: What’s different about how you learn? The answer will likely be: Pressure, comparison, information transfer and judgemental assessment remain.

This results in disconnection between subjects – disconnected from purpose. The challenge before school leaders is, therefore, not of policy implementation, but one of experience design for schools.

What schools are doing right

Most NEP implementation looks like redesigning subject structures, training teachers in new pedagogies, updating assessment methods (competency-based, continuous evaluation), integrating vocational and academic streams, revising textbooks and learning materials, and creating new roles (mentors, counsellors). But what matters is the lived experience students have each day.

Six experiences every child should have

NEP 2020 asks schools to design:

An experience of introspection and self-knowledge: A woven thread through learning, examining what they’re discovering about themselves, and seeing schooling as a mirror to understand their own mind, strengths, and questions.

An experience of playfulness and exploration: NEP speaks of the joy of learning. But joy doesn’t emerge from better content. It emerges from permission to explore, to wonder, to not know, to try and fail and readjust. Are students experiencing learning as exploration or as a sequence of correct answers?

An experience of interconnection of subjects: Multidisciplinary learning is about helping students feel how mathematics lives inside music, how history breathes through literature, and how science answers questions they care about.

An experience of agency and choice: Flexibility in NEP is about students feeling that their choices matter, and that a school is designed around their emerging interests and questions, and they are the owners of their pathways.

An experience of productive struggle: NEP emphasises 21st-century-skills – critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem-solving. But these emerge through grappling with real problems, not through worksheets about problem-solving. Schools must design challenges that require them to think, adapt, and persist.

An experience of belonging and purpose: Students need to feel seen and believe their learning matters. Does every student feel known by at least one teacher?

Experience design audit

The real test of an experience design lies in observing students’ posture as they walk in, their alertness, anxieties, curiosities, and engagement. In a typical class, who is doing the thinking – the teacher or the students? If we continue to respond to students’ mistakes, inflicting shame, and not correction or exploration of why, we must pause. If our assessments are an invitation for students to show what they can do and not a judgement of what they failed to do, we have lived the NEP 2020. If they can’t answer why a particular subject matters to them, then our design hasn’t yet created the experience of purpose.

NEP 2020 asks us today: If a student spent 15 years in our schools, what experience would they have had? Is that the experience NEP was asking us to design? If there’s a gap between the answer and the aspiration, we have found our task. Designing experience.

The writer is mentor-in-residence, GEMS U40 Initiative.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.