New Delhi: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has decided to lighten the syllabus load for students in the academic year 2022-23 in view of the pandemic-induced disruption in schools, ThePrint has learnt.
Academic sessions in schools have been disrupted many times in the last two years because of Covid-19, with continuous school closures and unavailability of online resources for many students.
In accordance with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the council is already working on revamping the curriculum as part of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF).
The NCF gives a broad outline for the text and course material to be taught in schools, both private and public, across the country. Since the NCF is a larger exercise and will take some time to be finalised, sources in the NCERT said experts are working on reducing the load for the next year in the interim.
On 15 December, NCERT Director In-charge Sridhar Srivastava wrote to all the department heads to come up with a report on syllabus reduction. The department heads were expected to submit their report by Tuesday, making suggestions on what all can be excluded from the syllabus for the upcoming academic session.
Confirming the development to ThePrint, Srivastava said the council will release more details once the expert suggestions have been studied.
Meanwhile, the books based on the NCF are expected to be introduced from the academic session 2023-24.
While Srivastava refused to comment on the kind of deductions in the syllabus, sources said the experts are looking at axing topics that have been repeated either in the same class or different levels.
“When a syllabus reduction exercise is undertaken, we mostly look at doing away with repetitive topics and topics that have been explained in a lengthier format than they are actually meant to be,” said a source at NCERT.
A similar effort was undertaken by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in 2020 towards the beginning of the pandemic in India, when the board “rationalised” syllabus for Class 9 to 12 students.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)