THE NATIONAL MISSION FOR MENTORING: A FRAMEWORK FOR CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN SCHOOL EDUCATION

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56815/IRJAHS/2025.V2025I1.54-64

Abstract

The National Mission for Mentoring (NMM) is a key mechanism for the continuous professional support of school educators. The NMM is a product of the National Education Policy of 2020, which calls for a structured, state-wide professional support system for teachers and recognizes their centrality to the process of educational transformation. This paper evaluates the NMM as a continuous professional support system by examining the policy elements, framework, institutional architecture, digital infrastructure, and the framework's applicability in the Indian context. The study mainly used a qualitative policy analysis approach with secondary descriptive data available through official and publicly available sources. These sources included the UDISE+ 2024-2025 data, the NCTE NMM portal, NCERT/DIKSHA resources, as well as several publications by UNESCO. The NMM is a professional learning system that, for the first time, has the potential to link expert mentors with teachers and school leaders, as well as numerous digital systems and learning supports. The author argues that the framework has a number of challenges, including the quality of mentors, equitable access, digital readiness, support in local languages, monitoring, and feedback cycles. NMM has the potential to be a sustainable CPD model by integrating contextual mentoring and evidence-planning within school-level communities of practice alongside national standards.