What is National Credit Framework?

October 20, 2022

The draft of the 1^st National Credit Framework has been released for public consultation.

The draft National Credit Framework or NCrF was recently released by the Union Ministry of Education. It is a framework, under the 2020 National Education Policy, to integrate the credits earned via school education, higher education, vocation training and skill education.
Such a framework already exists for higher education and for the technical education field. This is the first time it is being applied to school and vocational education.
The draft NCrF was formulated by a high-level committee consisting of members from:

It is to be operationalized through the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC), launched last year, by the UGC for higher education. ABC is a digital repository of credits. The credits would also be linked to Digi locker to enable verification and portability.
This framework would apply to courses from class V to PhD. It doesn’t recognize hard separation, in accordance with NEP 2020, among the different learning areas as arts and sciences or vocational and academic or curricular and extra-curricular when it comes to assignment of credits and credit levels.
According to the draft, the credits are to be awarded based on the number of learning hours. 30 hours of learning would translate into 1 credit point.
Credits could also be earned through lab work, sports and games, innovation labs, yoga, social work, exams, class tests, NCC, field visits, etc.