NAS must not turn into a high-stakes exam: Delhi Dy CM Manish Sisodia at education ministers’ meet in Gujarat

“In India, we have a traditional annual examination process of three hours which decides the future of children. This causes a lot of stress on schools and leads to pressure on students to pass the exam. I fear that NAS is also shifting along the same lines, where getting high scores in NAS has become the priority of state education departments. This will create additional pressure on students,” he said.

The recently released findings of NAS 2021 showed Delhi to be lagging behind the national average in all subjects at the primary level.

At the event, he also stated that the National Education Policy should be supported by a legal framework to enable its full implementation.

“The recommendations of the recently introduced NEP 2020 are progressive but need an enabling legal framework to realise its full potential. There are many provisions in different state education laws which restrict the proper implementation of NEP… There is a need for a new legal framework for NEP to align it with the forward-looking provisions of NEP 2020. Otherwise, the policy will not be able to cross the hurdles created by existing legal provisions and age-old practices,” he said.

He referred to the Gujarat Primary Education Act 1961, according to which, he said, education from class 1 to 7 is compulsory, but parents are responsible for it. The Delhi School Education Act of 1973 mainly talks about private schools and also suggests corporal punishment in certain cases which is against the RTE Act 2009, Sisodia added.