The government will provide study materials till Class V in 22 Indian languages as the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 places a special emphasis on the mother tongue, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said here (here where?) on Tuesday, March 28. The minister was at the launch of the three-day conference Future of Learning Collaborative by the city's Anant National University and the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

Speaking to the media, he said that the special feature of the NEP is the mother tongue and local language. The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by him on Monday to review the study materials for the foundational stage under the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF), he informed, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express. 

Speaking on this, the minister said, "We have decided to provide the curriculum till the fifth standard in 22 Indian languages listed in the Constitution. Study materials of the foundational stage, be it textbook, playbook or play-based material, will be prepared in 22 languages of the Indian Constitution using technology."

Read Also : Say goodbye to disparities in student scores: NCERTS joins hands with ETS to launch PARAKH to set norms for all school boards

So far...

Till now, NCERT books were being provided in three languages: English, Hindi and Urdu, he said. As per the new school education system outlined in NEP 2020, children will spend five years in the foundational stage, three years each in the preparatory and middle stages and four years in the secondary stage.
 

When did the revision of textbooks begin?

It was in 2020 the centre started the process to revise school textbooks by appointing former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Kasturirangan as the head of a 12-member steering committee responsible for developing a new NCF.

Further, talking about the government's plan for a Digital University, to be built on a networked hub-spoke model, Pradhan said it is a unique concept with no world model and deliberations for the same are underway. With regards to this, he said, "To the best of our knowledge, there exists no university globally which provides a digital platform at this scale, from registration to examination through a virtual platform, while maintaining quality."

"India is developing a global model and deliberations at various levels are going on plus discussions with stakeholders," he added, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.