THEORETICAL EXTENSION OF THE NEW EDUCATION POLICY 2020 USING TWITTER MINING

Abstract

In 2015, India adopted the UN‟s Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal 4 which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. As the existent educational system was inadequate to meet the desired sustainable goal, the Indian government introduced the New Education Policy (NEP) in 2020. Considered as an inclusive education policy that focuses on fostering knowledge and value-based education, this study aims to evaluate the paradigm of NEP in the higher education sector. The study collected data from official policy documents (from the Ministry of Human Resource Development website) and Twitter to explore the critical areas in the NEP. By adopting the qualitative analysis method, the data were analysed using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software. After mining the data from tweets and policy documents, sentiment analysis and other forms of graphical representations were conducted. The study identified three themes namely students, language and discipline. The sentiment analysis revealed that the majority of the people were optimistic about the implementation of the NEP in the higher education sector. The study suggests practical implications for the higher educational institutes (HEIs), teachers and researchers.