PARENTAL AWARENESS AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS ART-INTEGRATED EDUCATION IN INDIA UNDER NEP 2020

Abstract

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 represents a significant transformation in India's education system, introducing art-based education to provide a comprehensive education that is full of joy, creativity, and holistic benefits. However, it does not investigate the nature of this change from the perspective of Indian parents. Therefore, this paper examines the answers provided by 136 Indian parents of school-going children in Pune. The online survey was designed and based on a 5-point Likert scale to determine how familiar parents were with NEP 2020 and their perceptions of the advantages of acquiring art-based knowledge (e.g., development of creativity, emotional life, academic achievement), responses that helped support practical actions further (e.g., educator training, use of the local languages, parent engagement). The data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS 26. The outcomes reveal that parental attitudes are strong and mainly positive, as evidenced by high average scores in both perceived benefits (M = 4.48, SD = 0.46) and implementation support (M = 4.51, SD = 0.45). Internal consistency was high (Alpha = .89 for benefits; Alpha = .91 for support), as evidenced by reliability tests. The t-tests were performed using one-sample t-tests and demonstrated significantly higher results than those of the neutral with p < 001. In addition, parents more exposed to NEP 2020 showed significantly greater support and belief in its potential effectiveness (r ≈ .42, p < .001). Its findings indicate firm parental support, suggesting that schools and policymakers need to engage more with families in co-designing art-based curricula, teachers need to be trained in art pedagogies, and local language adaptation of content should take place to make the policy inclusive and culturally diverse in its vision.