Hyderabad: Girls playing football with boys. A woman in a brown overcoat doing her duty as conductor of a public bus. Farm activities featuring men and women working shoulder-to-shoulder. Men helping with kitchen work. This is no pipedream of gender equality, human values and inclusion; it’s what Andhra Pradesh is doing with school education.
The state is the first in India to undertake a systemic and holistic transformation of school education by revamping the curriculum to the needs of the new millennium.
Andhra’s impactful exercise comes at a time when the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and state boards of education are at odds over revising the history syllabus, education department officials told ThePrint.
School textbooks from Classes 1 to 8 have been redesigned to accurately represent all genders by eliminating gender stereotyping. Gender-neutral language is being used in text as well as with illustrations, and the Directorate of School Education and the State Council of Educational Research have taken care to include non-traditional portrayals of both men and women in various roles.
Work is underway at the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) on remodelling textbooks from Class 9 and 10 as well to incorporate similar changes.
“At a time when we’re talking about a learning-outcome-based approach to classroom sessions, we need to simultaneously build a strong education system that is equitable, inclusive, and resilient, that leaves no girl or boy behind. Gender parity is crucial for students in the 21st century, and our efforts have been focused on taking down barriers in accessing and completing education and reaching foundational learning milestones,” said Venkata Krishna Reddy, Director of the State Council of Education Research and Training.
Officials in the Directorate of School Education (DSE) told ThePrint that changes to the curriculum were made to adapt not only to the needs of 21st century learners, but also to incorporate experiential learning and assist holistic development of children. The curricular changes have also adopted the suggestions made by the National Education Policy (NEP).
After 2021, a major turning point for the policy as it marked the official launch of the implementation phase at the grassroots level, many states were encouraged to incorporate the NEP’s suggestions.
Driven by Minister for Human Resource Development and Real-Time Governance Nara Lokesh, the objective of the school curriculum’s transformation is to effect critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and coordination amongst students. State education officials said that Lokesh is keen on adapting the changes in transforming education as suggested by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The SDG 4 suggests: “Achieving inclusion requires targeted strategies and systemic transformation to ensure all learners have equal access to quality education, essential for meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.”
Secretary of School Education Thameem Ansariya told ThePrint that doing away with rote-learning has been a key motivator for the government to engage in such structural curricular changes. “We’re focusing on the cognitive, physical, emotional, aesthetic, and language learning abilities of the students. We need to ensure our children are able to compete with their peers at the state, country, and global levels,” he said.
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Education in human values
To aid in the emotional and psychosocial development of children, a special programme in human values education has also been introduced in the syllabus. The EHV (education in human values) programme has been designed by thought leader Chaganti Koteswara Rao, and it is administered in Telugu, so that there is equal emphasis on learning the native tongue as well.
The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) for students from Classes 6 to 8 is another new feature. A few chapters of the mathematics, social and science textbooks have been re-written to help students understand how AI prompts are designed and how additional information on chosen topics can be elicited.
These changes are being implemented in Andhra Pradesh’s 45,000 primary and upper primary schools and 6,800 high schools. More than 62 lakh children study at the government-run, aided, and private schools in the state. “Our focus has been to nativise the concepts of learning to the extent possible so that students develop an understanding of local culture, values, and the social settings in the state. While most of the lessons are in accordance with the Central Board of Secondary Education syllabus used across India, about a fifth of it has been contextualised to Andhra,” Venkata Krishna Reddy said.
A team of 200 people was deployed to implement these large-scale changes. They worked ceaselessly to create lesson plans based on learning outcomes. For nine months, the team of teachers, policy experts, student counsellors, and state government officials worked to ensure the academic session in 2026 has a new set of textbooks and workbooks.
An expert committee reporting to the minister was formed that included the Directorate of School Education (DSE), SCERT, consultancy firm KPMG, and several educational consultancies in India such as SALT, Sattva Kaivalya, and Foundation Literacy and Numeracy.
To assist in teacher training, separate teacher handbooks have been created for each class, officials said. Assessment booklets are pre-structured to include formative and summative assessments for a full-fledged rollout of the revamped curriculum. Master resource persons at the field, district, and state levels have already been identified for training to ensure a smooth transition from the old to the new curriculum, the DSE official said.
“The idea is to effect a behavioural change in children. We are of the firm belief that classroom transactions have a bearing on social transformation. If we are able to implement these changes in practice, then Andhra would have joined an elite list of nations that have transformed their education system,” Ansariya said.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)