Ravindra Kumar Mishra (Former Chief Consultant, Ministry of Education (formerly MHRD), GOI. He can be reached at rkmishrajee@gmail. com) The second anniversary of The National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 was celebrated on the 29th of July 2022. The policy aims at the substantial transformation of the education system at all stages. Several initiatives have been launched to mark the occasion. It includes national innovation and entrepreneurship promotion policy for schools in order to promote a learning ambience and ethos where creativity, ideation, innovation, problem-solving and entrepreneurship skills of students are nurtured, irrespective of their age, introduction of 75 "Bharatiya games" in schools, the launch of 'Kalashala initiative' in 750 schools to help students discover India's rich cultural heritage and a public consultation survey to seek suggestions for the new national curriculum framework for schools. 200 virtual labs and Vidya Amrit Portal are among the newly launched initiatives. The ministry also announced a public consultation survey in 23 languages to seek inputs and suggestions for the development of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) on the basis of which the content of school books will be decided. A large amount of online content (290,000 pieces of e-content, including audio, videos, assessments, infographics, worksheets, hard spots explanations, etc. ) has been developed for all four stages on the DIKSHA platform (in the public domain), in 36 Indian languages, including in Indian Sign Language (ISL). More than 70% of all school textbooks prescribed by state governments, and 100% of NCERT textbooks are now QR coded and tagged with e-contents. Even as all of the changes suggested under the policy are yet to be launched, schools claim still need to be done for a complete overhaul. Even after two years of its launch, a sizeable number of schools are yet to be prepared to implement the policy and still have a lot of work to do. On this occasion of the second anniversary, let us look back at the progress related to NEP 2020 so far. The NEP 2020 states that wherever possible, the medium of instruction must be in the mother tongue or local language. This must be done until at least class 5, but preferably till class 8. States like Punjab, Maharashtra, Telangana and Karnataka have moved forward to make Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu, and Kannada compulsory in primary and secondary stages. This has created disappointment among parents and students who are especially in private schools, whose preferred language is English. The NEP focus on empowering teachers and improving them as professionals is a key area that many agree will yield results for students. Competency-based assessment, specifically what it looks like in practice and how to implement it regularly, the experiential lesson plans, skill-based test questions, or hands-on professional development modules — many Teacher Education Institutions and schools ask about and want to understand better. It has been felt that online, offline and blended pedagogy or methodology and teacher skills are the most cited as the area in which the most work needs to be done. These interventions involve a fundamental shift in the teaching/learning process to a way in which students are doing more hands-on learning and problem-solving in the class. Seventy per cent of the schools feel that they are not fully ready to implement it. They think that a lot of work is yet to be done. This is one of the major findings that emerged from the survey conducted by Singapore-based XSEED Education, an academic programme for schools. The highlights of the survey conducted on the second anniversary of the NEP are - after admissions and enrolments, teacher quality is the top challenge faced by schools in India and making the classroom experiential was the top NEP implication for school leaders In the last two years since its eventful launch, the NEP has moved some ground in terms of meeting key milestones, notwithstanding the challenges from the global health pandemic. To begin with, the government has done well in terms of building awareness and interest amongst diverse stakeholders on the mission and vision of the NEP. Endeavours are being made for a systemic shift from 10+2+3 to 5+3+3+4, albeit there are challenges. While the NEP has begun gathering a fair degree of momentum, the road to its realization is filled with endless potholes. First, the sheer size and diversity of India's education sector make implementation an uphill task. For example, the size of the school education system alone. With more than 15 lakh schools, 25 crore students, and 89 lakh teachers, India remains the second largest education system in the world. The NEP has stated that to realize the goals of the new policy, the country has to raise public spending on education to 6 per cent of GDP whereas the country's education system is underfunded and lacks the capacity for innovation and scale up. The internal capacities within the education ministries (centre and states), academic authorities, leadership academies and other regulatory bodies need strengthening to steer the magnitude of transformations envisaged in the NEP. .