NCERT had said that in 2024-25, students of Classes 3 and 6 will get new books.. File.
| Photo Credit: V. Sudershan
Students of Class 6 will be without textbooks for Mathematics, Science and Social Sciences as schools open for the academic year 2024-25 this month. The introduction of the new National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks based on the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and New Education Policy 2020 for Class 6 has been delayed.
NCERT had said that in 2024-25, students of Classes 3 and 6 will get new books.
“While new textbooks for Class 3 have hit the market, the entire lot for Class 6 has not yet been made available to students, leaving students (with) no textbooks to study from,” an official from the Ministry of Education (MoE) told The Hindu. Officials said the students are likely to get the new books within two months.
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Last July, MoE had constituted the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) to develop new textbooks from Classes 3 to 12. MoE had set an ambitious deadline of developing new textbooks for all grades within seven months of constituting the NSTC by February this year.
The deadline was later revised, and it was decided that only students of Classes 3 and 6 will get new textbooks this academic year. However, NCERT has not received the drafts of the new books for Social Science, Mathematics and Science for Class 6 from NSTC, officials said. Once NSTC submits the approved drafts, NCERT can issue a print order and make the textbooks available within 10 to 15 days.
At present, students of Class 6 are without textbooks for the three subjects because NCERT was instructed not to print books with the old syllabus. Even online, only books on the language subjects — English, Hindi and Urdu — are available for download.
“This predicament of not having access to old books and not receiving new books has left Class 6 students in a lurch. We are expecting a delay of around two months before we can make new books available to the students,” an official said.
MoE sources said there is a possibility that three books on Social Science subjects — ‘Our Pasts’ (History), ‘Our Earth: Our Habitat’ (Geography) and ‘Social and Political Life’ (Political Science) will be merged into one. However, there is no clarity on this yet as NSTC has not sent drafts for publication to the NCERT.
For Class 3, new books for English, Hindi, Urdu, Mathematics, Environmental Education and Arts are in the process of being printed and supplied, officials said.
Last November, the Ministry had said that new textbooks with revised syllabus will be introduced from Classes 1 to 12, in line with NCF. Later, NCERT said only Classes 3 and 6 will get new textbooks. This, officials said, was because NSTC did not want to introduce the new textbooks for higher grades in a haste.
NSTC has on board M.C. Pant, chancellor of National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, professor Manjul Bhargava from Princeton University, Sudha Murthy, chairperson of Infosys Foundation, music maestro Shankar Mahadevan, and Bibek Debroy, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council among others.
The new books will comprise the fourth generation of NCERT textbooks since the 1990s. While the first generation of books were published in the 1990s, between 2002 and 2004, under the NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, there were ‘pro-Hindutva’ changes. A third generation of textbooks were released between 2006 and 2008 by the Congress-led government.
After the NDA government assumed power in 2014, and since the past decade, a fourth generation of textbooks are being moulded that have seen at least three rounds of revision and will be introduced after the NSTC’s nod. Officials said NSTC is working on new textbooks till Class 12 and could take at least two more years to introduce them.