The year 2025 will be remembered as the year Karnataka adopted its own State Education Policy (SEP), rejecting the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020. This was a poll promise of the Congress party in 2023.
The State government formed a committee under former University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman Sukhdeo Thorat in October, 2023 to formulate an SEP, and the report was expected within five months. But after several extensions, the SEP report was finally submitted in August, 2025.
The SEP-2025 has made several recommendations like discarding the three-language formula and adopting a two-language formula instead. It has also recommended Kannada/mother tongue as the medium of instruction in primary education sector, extending Right to Education till 18 years of age of the students, implementing reservation matrix in even private education institutes, among others.
However, the SEP hasn't been implemented yet and it is hoped that it will be implemented from the academic year 2026-27. While the Higher Education Department has formed an experts committee to implement the SEP Commission’s recommendations pertaining to higher education, not even such an exercise has been initiated for school education yet.
