Which of the following is NOT true of National Education Policy 2020 on…

NEP 2020's three-language formula (para 4.13) is the Policy's core school language requirement, and its defining feature is flexibility: the three languages are chosen by the States, the regions and the students themselves, subject to a single binding constraint — at least two of the three must be native to India. The Policy does not itself fix which specific languages occupy the three slots. Separately from this formula, paras 4.17-4.19 govern the study of India's classical languages.

Applying this to each statement:

• Mother tongue/home language — holds. Para 4.11 provides that the home language/mother tongue be the medium of instruction wherever possible until at least Grade 5, preferably Grade 8, with its continued teaching thereafter, and the Policy repeatedly promotes its use. Because a mother tongue native to India counts towards para 4.13's requirement that at least two of the three chosen languages be native to India, it is one of the languages a student may take under the formula — the Policy permits and encourages this rather than assigning the mother tongue a fixed slot.

• Indian languages — holds. Para 4.13's two-native-languages constraint places Indian languages inside the formula by construction: whatever the State, region or student chooses, at least two of the three must be native to India.

• English — holds. Para 4.13 leaves the specific choice of the three languages to States, regions and students subject only to that constraint, so English is among the languages that may be taken as one of the three; the Policy discusses English's place in school education without excluding it from the formula.

• A classical language — does not hold as a general proposition. Paras 4.18-4.19 offer classical-language study as a separate, additional course of at least two years from Grade 6 onward, made available alongside the three-language formula rather than as a component the formula itself provides for.

Cross-check: the one genuine complication is the Sanskrit carve-out in para 4.17 — Sanskrit is a classical language and is expressly offered "as an option in the three-language formula," so the keyed statement is not false under every literal reading. What the Policy places outside the formula is the general classical-language provision that this statement describes, and none of the other three statements is a candidate for being untrue. The official CBSE final answer key for CTET Paper II of 21 January 2024 selects this same statement across all four shuffled sets, confirming the intended reading.

Therefore the statement that is NOT true of NEP 2020's language-education provisions is that a classical language is studied under the three-language formula: NEP provides classical-language study as a distinct, additional option, not as a component the formula itself mandates.