Ministry invites suggestions from public on move to trim school curriculum

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry on Monday invited suggestions from teachers, parents students and other stakeholders for "rationalising" school curriculum for classes I to XII.

"There is an urgent need to rationalise school curriculum because the objective of education is to prepare a good human being from the system," HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said, appealing to all stakeholders to send in their views and suggestions by April 6. He said that suggestions should be precise and given online "in the prescribed format" at http://164.100.78.75/DIGI

He also assured that personal details of those submitting suggestions will remain confidential.

Cutting by half

The minister recently directed the National Council of Educational Research and Training, an arm of the HRD Ministry, to revise school curriculum to cut down the syllabus by half so that students get time for value education, physical education, life skill education and experiential learning, apart from academics.

"The objective of seeking suggestions is to make the content more balanced in various subjects offered from class I to class XII as prescribed by the NCERT/CBSE," the minister said.

Meanwhile, replying to a written question in the Lok Sabha on the topic, Javadekar said the NCERT was "advised" to undertake an exercise to review school syllabus "with a view to reducing the curriculum load on students".

Sharing some details about the action plan, he told LS members that the NCERT will conduct an analysis of the current syllabi and textbooks prescribed by it, focussing on the learning outcomes and curriculum linkages across classes and subjects.

To trim the existing curriculum, the council will identify overlapping contents of subjects, assess the comprehensibility of language as well as age-appropriateness of the contents.