Kasturirangan-led panel to develop new curriculum for schools
- September 22, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Kasturirangan-led panel to develop new curriculum for schools
Subject – Governance
Context – THE GOVERNMENT on Tuesday initiated the process to revise the NCERT textbooks, which are taught in CBSE-affiliated schools across the country, by setting up a committee for drafting the document that will lay down the broad guidelines for changes in the curriculum.
Concept –
- The Government initiated the process to revise the NCERT textbooks, which are taught in CBSE-affiliated schools across the country, by setting up a committee for drafting the document that will lay down the broad guidelines for changes in the curriculum.
- The 12-member National Steering Committee will be headed by former ISRO chief K Kasturirangan, who also headed the drafting committee of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The document, known as the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), was last prepared in 2005 under the UPA government, and before that, it was revised in 1975, 1988 and 2000.
- The formation of the committee comes a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement that school students will study under a new curriculum drawn from the NEP by 2022 when the country celebrates the 75th year of Independence.
- The steering committee has been given a tenure of three years to complete its task.
- The subsequent revision of textbooks by the National Council of Educational Research and Training will draw from the new NCF.
- In fact, the steering committee will develop four such frameworks, one each to guide the curriculum of school education, teacher education, early childhood education and adult education.
- Significantly, the NEP also states that elements such as knowledge from ancient India “will be incorporated in an accurate and scientific manner throughout the school curriculum wherever relevant” and that “Indian Knowledge Systems, including tribal knowledge and indigenous and traditional ways of learning, will be covered and included in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, yoga, architecture, medicine, agriculture, engineering, linguistics, literature, sports, games, as well as in governance, polity, conservation”.
- Traditionally, the state governments also follow the NCF in revising their respective school curriculum through the participation of the State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), which draw up the State Curriculum Frameworks (SCF).
- Importantly, the newly constituted NCF has also been directed to draw inputs from the SCFs, which will have to be drawn up first, unlike in the past when the SCFs followed the NCF.