School syllabus may be cut by 15% next academic year, says HRD minister Javadekar
NCERT is working towards giving the final touches to a curriculum rationalisation programme which will apply to all schools affiliated to the CBSE and state boards that follow NCERT syllabus, the minister said.
The school syllabus for students from class 1 to class 12 may be reduced by 10-15% in the next academic year, human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar said on Wednesday, in a move that will make the curriculum less arduous for students.
The minister added that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is working towards giving the final touches to a curriculum rationalisation programme which will apply to all schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education and state boards that follow NCERT syllabus.
In February, the minister announced that NCERT syllabus would be reduced in the next one or two years.
“We have received more than one lakh suggestions...I hope this year (the new academic session) 10-15% of the syllabus will be reduced, and then next year further reduction can happen,” he said. Amita Wattal, the principal of Springdales School in Delhi, said, “A lot of the content in the textbooks is really outdated and irrelevant now. A review of these books was really needed. But I hope the review was done in a scientific manner, and the NCERT has not removed any important portions of the syllabus.” Javadekar said that there were nearly 7-8 million teachers in the school system, which he said was adequate but their deployment was a problem.
Under a HRD ministry plan, if a state fails to efficiently deploy teachers across its schools, it could impact release of their central grant. This is being done to ensure a healthy studentteacher ratio in all government schools and to reduce the number of single-teacher schools.
