Support syllabus cut but CBSE must say how deleted topics were chosen: Sisodia

New Delhi: Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday sought the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) response over the rationalisation of syllabi

New Delhi: Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday sought the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) response over the rationalisation of syllabi from classes 9 to 12 announced a day earlier and questioned the selection process adopted by the board while deciding on reduction of the course material.

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To compensate for the lack of classroom teaching during the Covid-19 crisis, the national board on Tuesday announced that it had reduced the course load by 30% for students of classes 9 to 12. The move, however, evoked sharp responses from many who claimed that important chapters had been omitted.

On Wednesday, Sisodia, who holds the education portfolio, said students should learn about social sciences through “authentic sources".

“The topics of social science which are dropped are so relevant in a contemporary context that it is important that children learn about it through authentic sources rather than through WhatsApp University,” he said in a statement.

Last month, Sisodia had also written to the Union minister of human resource development, requesting a syllabus reduction of 30%.

While saying that the Delhi government had been “a votary of syllabus reduction” to encourage in-depth learning, Sisodia on Wednesday questioned the process the course committees, curriculum committee and the governing body of CBSE adopted to arrive at the decision to remove or include specific chapters.

“The ‘curriculum deduction details’ containing subject-wise topics that have been deleted do not give any reason as to why that particular topic or chapter has been left out,” Sisodia said, adding that the board should have explained the rationale behind dropping certain topics.

The 1,030 Delhi government schools are affiliated to CBSE. More than 15 lakh students from Delhi’s private and government schools will be learning under the revised syllabi.

The education minister asked why topics such as Democratic Rights and Food Security in India had been removed completely from class 9 syllabus; four chapters from Democratic Politics-Democracy and Diversity, Gender, Religion and Caste, Popular Struggles and Movement and Challenges to Democracy have been completely removed from class 10 syllabus; Federalism, Citizenship, Nationalism, and Secularism were completely removed from class 11 Political Science syllabus; and why Understanding Partition, Social Movements and New Social Movements in India, and Regional Aspirations were removed from class 12 syllabus.

He questioned the removal of Science topics such as Human Eye and Sources of Energy along with dropping of a different genre of writing like Article and Report Writing, Letter to the Editor and Application for Jobs from English Core subjects among other things.

On Tuesday, the board said schools could ensure the reduced topics could be explained to students to understand other concepts. However, students would not be evaluated on those topics in the 2020-21 examinations.

To this, Sisodia said, “Asking the heads of schools and teachers to cover those topics while explicitly saying these will not be part of internal or year-end board exams is not enough as it is well known that evaluation drives the teaching-learning in class. Hence, for all practical purpose these topics are unlikely to be covered.”

Calls and texts to the CBSE officials for a response were not answered.

Earlier on Wednesday, the board clarified that topics removed from the syllabi were either being covered by a rationalised syllabus or were included in the Alternative Academic Calendar of NCERT, which prescribes a list of activities for students with specific learning outcomes.

“Since the syllabus reduction came so late, we have already covered a lot of removed topics in the online classes. Teachers are currently busy analysing the syllabus and deciding on how they will be taught. The reduction in the syllabus will also affect the paper pattern during the assessment and we are keeping that in mind as well,” said the head of a government school in Dwarka, requesting anonymity.