In order to give relief to the school-going children of the burden of heavy curriculum, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is planning to steps and address this problem of the school students.
Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar recently made this announcement.
A report by Tanvi Patel published on the website of The Better India stated from the beginning of the academic year 2019-2020, the content of the NCERT curriculum will be cut down by 10-15 per cent and according to HRD Minister Javadekar, this is the first step towards reducing the overall curriculum by 50 per cent.
There are a large number of students who have been studying in different schools across the Northeast under the CBSE.
The report quoted Javadekar as saying while speaking at a meeting of the NCERT general council: “[The CBSE] curriculum will be reviewed to ensure holistic education in which there will be time for physical education, value education, life-skills education and experiential learning. [It] needs to be reduced. We have decided to reduce [the] curriculum by 50 %. This year, there will be 10-15 % reduction. Next year it will be more. Finally, in 2021, the target will be achieved.”
The report stated speaking to ThePrint, an NCERT official said, “Social sciences will have more cuts than science, mathematics and languages… Science, mathematics and the languages do not need much reduction, just some pruning of content here and there. The science syllabus for higher classes like Class XI and XII especially does not need any reduction because that is a level at which students need more study material.”
As per the plan, all the duplicate and redundant portions will be edited out, leaving the students with concise, crisp textbooks. The HRD Ministry, however, promises that this reduction will be scientific.
The report further quoted Javadekar as saying: “All the states will be assessed on performance indicators based on 70 parameters. This will improve the quality of education and give a fair picture of where each state stands. There will be a healthy competition to improve the performance.”
The Union HRD Minister further claimed that more NCERT books will be published this year as compared to the last two years.
It quoted Javadekar as saying: “Two crore books were published two years ago, last year six crore books were published, and this year, we aim to produce eight crore or more books.”