When teaching language, prescriptive policies say that there are specific, strict rules to language and grammar that must be followed to speak ‘good’ language. These rules are taught to everyone in school and become the norm in professional settings.
In contrast, descriptive policies do not want specific rules to be taught, but rather just describe different uses of language without saying one is ‘correct’. Rules are thus made according to the daily usage of the language by speakers.
For example, prescriptive policies would not be ok with sentences like “To boldly go where no man has gone before”, “I is a student”, ""I am shook"", or variations of language such as Singlish or Spanglish, whereas descriptive policies would be.