Yogi Adityanath led UP Government has decided to adopt NCERT textbooks for all of its students from academic year starting in 2018. This decision is set to impact over 35 lakh students who are currently studying in schools affiliated to UP board and studying in government, aided or non-aided schools.
Central Board of Secondary Education had earlier made an announcement to stop the dominance of private publishers in the schools and decided to make it mandatory for all CBSE affiliated schools to use NCERT textbooks. The move by UP board has come in the wake of the same and with this, there are speculations that more state boards can make similar announcements to call for a uniform syllabus across the country. A few states like Karnataka have already adopted NCERT textbooks for their state board students.
According to an official of the education ministry, the board will start this procedure for students from class IX to XII and gradually cover all the school years. This is done in order to prevent any extra load on the government as the move of providing new textbooks to all 35 lakh students in one go could be really challenging.
Under the new government, education department has seen a lot of changes. It has introduced new age topics like GST to make students aware of the latest terms. Also, the district education officers have been instructed to inspect the schools on regular basis and to send the report to education ministry.