New Delhi: School education secretary Sanjay Kumar told ThePrint that state governments can choose to teach as they wish, in a reference to the Kerala government’s decision to teach students what has been removed from the new National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks Has gone. for the academic year starting this month.
The secretary spoke exclusively to ThePrint on the sidelines of the G-20 Education Working Group meeting, currently underway in Bhubaneswar.
“As we all know that education is a concurrent subject and SCERT [State Council of Educational Research and Training] decide what they want to include in their curriculum. If Kerala wants to teach something to its students, it is free to do so,” said Kumar.
The Kerala SCERT on Monday said that it is going to teach some portions removed from the NCERT textbooks. ThePrint did it earlier informed of Some schools across India have also decided to teach science subjects from the old books to the students as some of the concepts are missing in the new books.
With the start of the new academic session this month, new textbooks with a “rational” syllabus were introduced in schools across the country. This rationalization – in the name of “reducing the burden” on students in the wake of Covid-19 – included deletions from history textbooks, such as the removal of an entire chapter on Mughal history, references to caste and inequality, references to the 2002 Gujarat riots, and a piece about the life of Mahatma Gandhi and his assassination by Nathuram Godse.
Some historians also criticized the deletion demanding to revert the changes. Some important concepts were removed from science books as well.
Talking about the issue, Kumar said that “there is no dispute” and whatever was done was due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
He added that the new books coming in 2024 would “mark a new beginning for teaching”. They would be based on a “deliberate exercise”, he said.
“Our books are going to be heavy and heavy on concepts and the child will be expected to re-imagine and imagine,” Kumar said, adding that the books should be out before the start of the next academic session of 2024-25. Will go
He also said that the books will combine theory with skill-based learning. Classes and teaching periods will also be structured according to the new books.
‘How to give students a choice’
Kumar said that apart from science labs, schools will have skill labs, where students will be tested on the skills they have learned in class.
“If they’re learning to do something with their hands, they have to test for that,” he explained.
The new books will be based on the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), the draft of which was released by the education ministry earlier this month. Among other things, the draft talks about making maths easier for children and including stories of local heroes in history books.
The draft has been placed online on the NCERT website for public feedback. Once finalised, the draft will be circulated to the states.
“States can either adopt or adapt the NCF. It is their choice what they want to keep,” Kumar said.
The discussion on skill-based education is also a part of the discussions being held by the G-20 Education Working Group under the theme “The Future of Work”.
According to the School Education Secretary, with so many options, students have to be given a chance to choose what they want to study. “We are also trying to work out how to give options to students and what they can do,” he added.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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