Reading the NEP 03: The Students Who Will Arrive
English

Every year,
in the first week of admissions,
someone on your staff sits
at a desk with a pile of forms.
The school chapters describe children
who will one day be my first-years.
What should I expect, and when?
Four of the boxes on that form are things
the school chapters want to change.
Most of that change will reach
your desk later than you might think.
In place of ten plus two,
the policy redraws school
from age 3 to 18 as stages of five,
three, three and four years.
It calls the stages purely curricular
and pedagogical,
so school buildings need not change.
The text calls the basics
its highest priority.
By its own estimate,
over 5 crore children
in elementary school could not read
a basic text or do simple sums.
Its target was universal reading
and arithmetic in primary school by 2025.
In secondary school,
students are to choose more subjects,
with no hard separation between arts,
humanities and sciences,
or between vocational
and academic streams.
Wherever possible,
children are to be taught
in the home language or mother tongue
until at least Class 5.
Board examinations
in Classes 10 and 12 stay.
They are to test core capacities,
and a student may take them twice
in a year, once to improve.
For entry to college,
the National Testing Agency is to offer
a common aptitude test
and subject tests at least twice a year.
The paragraph's last sentence leaves
their use to each university and college.
So, on paper,
my first-years will come with firm basics,
a wider choice of subjects
and marks earned without coaching.
On paper, yes.
And one part of these chapters is a task
for colleges:
preparing school teachers.
Citing a commission appointed
by the Supreme Court,
the policy says most stand-alone teacher
colleges are essentially selling degrees.
By 2030, teacher education is to move
into multidisciplinary colleges
and universities.
By then, the minimum degree
for a school teacher is to be a four-year
integrated Bachelor of Education.
It is a dual major, in education
and a subject such as history,
music or mathematics.
So your department may be asked
to teach future school teachers.
A mission for basic reading
and arithmetic began in 2021,
with 2026–27 as its target year.
The Common University Entrance Test began
in 2022, for central universities.
The four-year teacher programme began
as a pilot in 2023–24.
In August 2025 Parliament's
standing committee on education
found 92 per cent
of teacher colleges private.
It asked for government funding,
so that rural students can afford
the programme.
In 2026 the Central Board
of Secondary Education held
its Class 10 examinations twice.
That board's new scheme
for Class 9 also began in 2026–27.
Its students sit their Class 10 boards
in 2028 and reach college
in 2030 at the earliest.
Most students come through state boards,
and there the year varies
by board and state.
In the government's
survey of December 2024,
Class 9 students averaged 54 per cent
in language and 37 in mathematics.
They can reach college from 2028.
The policy says entrance
tests should end coaching.
Most of my first-years went to coaching.
That is the policy's aim.
A national survey in 2025 found
27 per cent of school students
in private coaching.
In urban higher secondary classes
the figure was nearly 45 per cent.
So are better-prepared students
on the way, or not?
Wilima Wadhwa wrote in January 2025
as director of the centre that runs
the Annual Status of Education Report,
a survey of rural children.
In twenty years, she wrote,
the survey had not seen gains this large
in early reading and arithmetic.
She credits the policy's focus
on foundational skills.
Anurag Mehra, then teaching engineering
and policy at IIT Bombay, wrote
as the common entrance test began in 2022.
One national test, he argued,
would make board marks matter little.
Schools would trade long written answers
for multiple-choice drill,
and coaching would reach deeper
into school.
That, he wrote,
works against the policy's own aims.
And who is in my first-year class
this year?
What do I do?
For now, they are mostly
students of the older syllabus.
In the first week,
set a short task that carries no marks,
and find out what they can do.
In a rural affiliated college,
a history teacher might ask
for one paragraph that weighs two sources.
In a state university commerce department,
it might be a percentage change
and a graph.
Then ask the class which board
and which medium they studied in.
And ask whether your institution plans
the four-year teacher programme,
and what your department would teach.
Our admission form already asks
for the board and the medium.
I have never once read those boxes.
This year's forms are still in the office.
The full text
and our sources are linked below.
Next time,
one campus and many disciplines.