NEP's Focus On Contextual Skills Gap Based Vocational Education

To understand the impact of recently announced New Education Policy 2020 on higher education, BW Education hosted a panel discussion on “Positive Impact of NEP 2020 on Higher Education” in association with BW Businessworld. The session was a part of the BW Education’s 40 under 40 Summit & Awards that aims to address the contribution of education leaders and award them for their exemplary works in the education industry.

The panel consisted of eminent and power-packed speakers: Ajitesh Basani, Secretary & Executive Director, Acharya Business School Bangalore; Jeet Marwadi, Director, Marwadi University; Dr V Rajesh Chowdhary, Head - Research & Development, Associate Professor, Hope Foundation International Institute of Information Technology and Radhika Bhandari, Director, Western India Institute of Aeronautics. 

The session was chaired by Sudhakar Rao, Director - Branding, ICFAI Group.

In her opening statement, Radhika Bhandari, Director, Western India Institute of Aeronautics said, “The New Policy has created a spark. We're moving towards a system-based education. We must ensure that students get live training. There's a lot of information which is available and the students now need to focus on acquiring skills beyond schooling. Our students need to study Indology to understand our culture. Because if we do not know who we are, how are we going to lead our lives?”

Commenting on the policy, Ajitesh Basani, Secretary & Executive Director, Acharya Business School Bangalore said, “It's a very well-drafted policy. There are a lot more positives in comparison to the negatives, in the NEP. It has broken down a lot of silos that were created earlier.”

Sharing his view on NEP, Dr V Rajesh Chowdhary, Head - Research & Development, Associate Professor, Hope Foundation International Institute of Information Technology stated, “It was apt for NEP policy to focus on multi-disciplinary culture. One of the key points in NEP is that we should have more and more research centres.”

Stressing the importance of skilling, Jeet Marwadi, Director, Marwadi University underlined. “Contextual skills gap based vocational education is one of the positives of NEP. We need to align our resource and policy to reach to the last mile. We are planning to do the class for mass because that's what the need of the hour is. We always want to put learners into the centre. Focus on learning and development is going to be the key for us. Teaching as a profession needs to be continuously improved.”