Between Policy Ambition and Classroom Reality: A Critical Review of STEM Education in Arunachal Pradesh, India
Main Article Content
Abstract
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the state-level ‘Mission Shikshit Arunachal 2029’ commit Arunachal Pradesh, a sparsely populated Himalayan border state with a predominantly Scheduled Tribe school population, to an ambitious, technology-intensive transformation of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. This review triangulates four evidence streams: policy documents; official administrative statistics (UDISE+ 2023–24 and 2024–25; ASER 2024); documentation of STEM interventions operating in the state (Atal Tinkering Labs, IBM STEM for Girls, Digi-Kaksha, merit scholarships and mathematics enrichment camps, including the 2026 Mathematical Thinking Camp at Pasighat); and two supervised undergraduate.
field studies in East Siang district on vendor numeracy and on student attitudes to AI-assisted instruction. Read through situated cognition, the multi-level digital divide and the experimental literature on educational technology, the evidence reveals a three-fold gap between policy and practice: infrastructural (33.6% of schools with internet against 63.5% nationally), organisational (a favourable pupil-teacher ratio of 13:1 coexisting with 562 single-teacher schools) and pedagogical (abstract classroom mathematics divorced from the robust situated numeracy documented in local markets). A ‘pedagogy-first, technology-second’ strategy with offline-capable tools, contextualised curriculum, and sustained teacher professional development offers the most credible route to the state’s stated goals, judged against measurable learning indicators rather than installed inputs.
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