Maharashtra government slashes 25% syllabus for Class 1-12 students

The state education department on Saturday announced that the syllabus for Class 1 to Class 12 of Maharashtra board will be reduced by 25% for the current academic

The state education department on Saturday announced that the syllabus for Class 1 to Class 12 of Maharashtra board will be reduced by 25% for the current academic year. The decision has been taken owing to the loss of teaching hours, as schools are yet to reopen in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.

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“The syllabus of 101 subjects has been reduced. While some chapters have been reduced from languages, the grammar next to each of these chapters will still be taught and considered for assessments. For practical exams, we have taken care to ensure that they are edited as per the current conditions and concepts to be taught in these exercises will be retained. We have tried to ensure that the original structure of chapters is not disturbed,” said Dinkar Patil, director, Maharashtra State Council of Educational Research and Training (MSCERT).

On Saturday, MSCERT uploaded a detailed document on its official website maa.ac.in with the subject-wise details on the revised content.

“In the revised syllabus, nothing is omitted because doing that would be detrimental to students. Instead, a few chunks of chapters have been kept for homework or self-study,” said Vikas Garad, deputy director of MSCERT.

While schools can download the class-wise documents and convey them to students, Balbharti is soon going to upload a revised set of books which demarcate the old and the revised syllabus.

“The syllabus in blue will be the syllabus which stays and the parts in red will be for self-study or homework,” added Garad.

Teachers welcomed the move and said that this would provide relief to students and parents. “It was needed under the current situation. However, the relaxation could have been a little more - upto 30% like the central boards,” said Rajesh Pandya, teacher at Fatima Devi High School in Malad.

The changes

Languages: While some chapters and poems, which are difficult to understand or are lengthy, have been excluded for most classes, while activities that need to be done after reading the chapter have been kept for self-study.

Social sciences: While some trivia columns titled “Did you know” have been excluded, for Class 9 and Class 10, some parts in the political science textbooks have been removed. For instance, the chapter on challenges ahead of Indian democracy for Class 10 civics, the board has removed subthemes such as communalism, Maoism and terrorism.

Mathematics: Most topics have been retained, but exercises have been drastically reduced. Some sums of moderate and difficult levels are not included in the revised syllabus.

Science: Several activities and experiments which require apparatus and detailed guidelines have been kept out of evaluations this year. A lot of extra information on concepts that exist in the textbooks has been kept for self-study.