Looking at the ongoing burden, the school going children are facing, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar announced a 10-15% reduction in the NCERT syllabus from the next academic session.
This decision was made by the minister at the meeting with the National Council of Educational Research (NCERT) general council on Saturday, he announced that the target is to cut an overall of 50%, this will be the first step towards reducing the ‘curriculum overload’.
“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. The curriculum 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,” Javadekar said after the meeting.
Speaking of the meeting an official from NCERT said, “Social sciences will have more cuts than science, mathematics, and languages… Science, mathematics, and 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.”
Another means by which the HRD Ministry is taking a progressive step forward is by grading states on their performance indicators in education, based on 70 parameters.
According to the new project, all the content which is either duplicate or redundant will be removed, leaving the textbooks with concise and crisp content to read.