Gandhinagar: Gujarat has named a task force for implementing the New Education Policy announced by the Union government in July. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Saturday, said that his government aims to become the first to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. To this end, they are forming a task force to create a plan of action. This 13-member team will be headed by Education Minister Bhupendrasingh Chudasama.
The team consists of Sudhir Jain, the Director of IIT- Gandhinagar; Pankaj Sharma, the Provost of Ahmedabad University; Navin Sheth, the Vice-Chancellor of GTU, and Gujarat University Vice-Chancellor Himanshu Pandya.
Earlier, the state-appointed task force consisted of 15 members for primary and secondary educational institutions. During a meeting of the members of the NEP committee for higher and technical education on Wednesday, various sub-committees have formed. These sub-committees will deal with issues such as courses and programmes, coordination among varsities, and strengthening them further. Besides, these sub-committees also work towards the improvisation of the quality of education.
With the new NEP translated into Gujarati, a task force is ready to form a road map for Gujarat. The Chief Minister of the state, Vijay Rupani said that this road map will provide a basis for bringing about drastic changes in education. These changes will affect primary, secondary, and higher education from KG (Kindergarten) to PG (Post Graduation).
Gujarat’s road map for implementing the New Education Policy
The task force starts from a policy that is barely seven weeks old. The Union Cabinet approved the National Education Policy 2020 on 29 July, replacing the 34-year-old National Policy on Education of 1986, according to the Press Information Bureau release issued that day. The document replaces the 10+2 school structure with a 5+3+3+4 design covering ages 3 to 18, with three years of anganwadi or pre-schooling folded into the formal system.
The higher education targets are just as demanding, which is why Gujarat’s sub-committees for courses, coordination among varsities and quality sit at the centre of the exercise. The policy sets a 50 per cent gross enrolment ratio in higher education by 2035, undergraduate degrees of three or four years with multiple exit options, an Academic Bank of Credits, and a single umbrella regulator, the Higher Education Commission of India, for all higher education except medical and legal education.
It also commits the Centre and states to lifting public investment in education to 6 per cent of GDP at the earliest. Implementing the New Education Policy therefore means redrawing admission rules, curricula and university governance at the same time, not one after the other. The same document promises a National Research Foundation, Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities, and the phasing out of college affiliation over 15 years, each of which lands on a state government’s desk as a separate piece of work.
In schools, the policy aims for 100 per cent gross enrolment from pre-school to secondary level by 2030, bringing 2 crore out-of-school children back into the mainstream through open schooling, an emphasis on foundational literacy and numeracy, vocational education with internships from Class 6, and teaching in the mother tongue or regional language at least until Grade 5. By 2030 a four-year integrated BEd is to become the minimum degree qualification for teaching, which puts teacher education on the task force’s agenda as well, and a Gender Inclusion Fund and a National Educational Technology Forum round out the list. The policy’s own calendar stages its targets at 2030 and 2035.
Several of those commitments come with conditions attached. The language clause is paired with a promise that no language will be imposed on any student. Assessment is to move towards a 360-degree progress card that tracks each student’s progress against learning outcomes. A new National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education is to be drawn up by the National Council for Teacher Education in consultation with NCERT, and the policy also proposes Special Education Zones for disadvantaged regions and groups. Each of these needs a state body, a state budget line or a state rule before it reaches a classroom.
National Education Policy: Vijay Rupani’s first-mover claim
Being first was the point of the announcement. With the policy translated into Gujarati and the task force in place, the Chief Minister framed the exercise as a road map from kindergarten to postgraduation. The membership puts the heads of IIT Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad University and the Vice-Chancellors of Gujarat Technological University and Gujarat University, two of the state’s public universities, at the same table, so the institutions that would have to carry out its recommendations are part of writing them.
The state had earlier appointed a 15-member task force for primary and secondary education, so the new team extends the exercise to higher and technical education, with sub-committees for courses and programmes, coordination among universities and the quality of teaching. The policy’s higher education changes, from three or four-year degrees with exit points to a credit bank that lets students carry credits between institutions, are the kind of work those sub-committees would have to turn into university rules.
Since then: from committee room to admission portal
The race Rupani described did not stay a one-horse affair. In August 2021, Karnataka’s higher education minister CN Ashwath Narayan said his state had become the first in the country to issue an order for implementing the National Education Policy, The News Minute reported, nearly a year after Gujarat’s task force was set up.
Gujarat’s own work on implementing the New Education Policy is now visible in its admissions system. The Education Department runs the Gujarat Common Admission Services portal, a single online admission window that lists 41 universities and institutes, 15 public and 26 private, with law, BEd and nursing programmes routed through the same portal. The portal also shows how much of the policy’s affiliation reform is still ahead: Gujarat University alone lists 325 colleges and Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University 643, while the policy expects every college eventually to become either an autonomous degree-granting college or a constituent college of a university.
Foreign universities have also arrived in the state: Australia’s Deakin University began classes at its GIFT City campus in Gandhinagar in July 2024 and the University of Wollongong opened its campus there in November 2024, both tracked on The Education Daily’s campus tracker. The first-state race was symbolic; the measure that matters for implementing the New Education Policy is seats, syllabuses and trained teachers.
