Competencies in School
Illustration: ChatGPT For decades, Indian schooling has treated learning as accumulation: more chapters, thicker textbooks, heavier bags, longer answers. Success was measured not by what a learner can do with knowledge, but by how much of it can be reproduced in a three-hour exam. The new education policy introduced five years ago [NEP 2020] marks an important conceptual shift. At least on paper, it raises a radical question: What should a learner actually be capable of doing at the end of schooling? Competency-based learning shifts the focus of education from accumulation of facts to acquisition of skills. A competency is not a topic completed or a chapter taught, but a demonstrable combination of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values. This approach is a paradigm shift or a quantum leap. Very little has changed in our schools in the last five years after NEP was put into practice because such changes take time. Secondly, most of our schools are not equipped for the majo...
