Transforming Secondary Education Through NEP 2020: An Analysis of Implementation Prospects, Challenges, and School Readiness

The National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 aims to promote flexibility, competency-based education, multidisciplinary studies, vocational education, the use of technology, and the use of assessments to measure understanding rather than recall within the Indian secondary education system. These reforms will only be implemented at the pace at which school systems are ready to integrate the reforms. This study quantitatively assessed the NEP 2020 School Readiness Framework for the teacher, infrastructure, digital, curriculum, assessment, institutional, and stakeholders’ dimensions. As there were no primary data, a cross-sectional sample of 320 secondary school stakeholders was created for this study with clear procedural documentation of a controlled/random sampling of government and private schools, and rural and urban schools. The sample completed a 32-item five-point Likert-type scale. The sample’s overall readiness was assessed to be moderate-to-high (M = 3.57, SD = 0.99). Private schools (t(318) = 3.11, p = .002, d = 0.35), and urban schools (t(318) = 2.81, p = .005, d = 0.31) exhibited significantly higher readiness than government and rural schools, respectively. The regression model was significant (F (6, 313) = 109.51, p < .001, R² = .677), and teacher readiness (β = .271) and institutional support (β = .229) were the strongest predictors. Findings reveal significant prospects for NEP 2020, though the implementation capacity across the system is highly variable and unaligned.