school more time to build foundation the policy modifies the current 102 structure breaking it down into foundational preparatory middle and secondary school levels the new structure now includes three years of preschool education for 36 year olds with the objective to provide widespread access to early education through anganwadis and expansion of existing schoolsnational mission on foundational literacy and numeracy an estimated 5 crore elementary students are not proficient in reading and writing and basic addition and subtraction by 2025 the goal is to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy by the time a child reaches the class 3 level threelanguage proficiency students will be taught three languages through their schooling years with state governments free to choose based on regional languages and students given the choice between other indian and foreign languages starting in class 6 or 7 the policies will also set in motion the standardisation of indian sign language board exams class 10 and 12 board exams will be made easier by testing less material to reward better core understanding of subjects rather than memorisation students will also be allowed to retake board exams once and only the best score of the two attempts will be counted exams will also be redesigned to include multiplechoice questions in addition to descriptive questions flexibility students will be free to choose subjects across streams with no hard separations between arts and sciences curricular and extracurricular and vocational and academic schools will be permitted to move to a semester or any other system to enable students to take a wider range of classes all subjects and their assessments will be offered at a standard level and a higher levelhigher education entrance exams there will be an aptitude test on the lines of sat in the us for entrance into colleges board results alone will no longer determine admission to be overseen by the national testing agency nta these tests will serve as a common entrance exam across the country with universities free to add other criteria however universities can choose to disregard nta assessments altogether and continue with their own entrance examsundergraduate bachelors courses will be of three to four years and offer multiple exit points that is students can leave with a certificate after one year a diploma for two years or the bachelors degree after completing threefour years the fouryear programme however provides more opportunities for researchbased education than the other optionspostgraduate nep 2020 allows institutes flexibility to design their own courses for those who do a threeyear bachelors degree a masters degree can be a twoyear course with the second year focusing on research for students who do a fouryear bachelors masters could be just one year integrated bachelorsmasters programmes spanning five years will be introduced but the mphil programme will be discontinued altogether for a phd students will need a fouryear bachelors or a masters with a threeyear bachelors degree