With the education system slowly recovering from the clutches of COVID in Karnataka, the ideal time to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) in schools may be running out.

A former consultant for the Karnataka Knowledge Commission and Bal Utsav founder Ramesh Balasundaram said that the pandemic had presented them with an opportunity to introduce digital learning in schools, the task made easier with the education system being crippled.

Bal Utsav is one of many NGOs that worked during the pandemic to help government schools, especially in rural areas, access digital education and devices.

“If we had attempted this and asked students to make a switch while schools were open, there might have been more resistance. But digital learning came in. So when a solution was given, there wasn’t much resistance,” he told The New Indian Express.

Ramesh Balasundaram said that in terms of NEP implementation, various educational NGOs were limited in their capacity until a new NEP National Curriculum Framework was developed. “NGOs have their restrictions in terms of scale, it’s when the government takes on these initiatives that they can make sure it reaches the last person. The adoption of technology in schools and being able to implement new mechanisms, in terms of the NEP, becomes easier when the system has stopped or paused,” he said.

While the education department is intent on rolling out the policy phase-wise in the state, some believe that they should move towards faster implementation in schools to help students get over one large hurdle of changes instead of changes across the next few years. These changes include the implementation of tech in schools, online learning and a host of changes added on due to the pandemic, in addition to changes in learning from the NEP.