BENGALURU: The state government has commenced the exercise of revising the curriculum for state board schools from the 2019-20 academic year on par with the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus. For this purpose, the state government has constituted a legislature committee consisting of members of all the three major political parties -Congress, BJP and JD(S).
The committee, headed by MLC Arun Shahpur, has been given the task of studying the existing state syllabus textbooks and compare it with NCERT textbooks and submit a report.
This comes in the wake of a recent NCERT report criticising the content and quality of state board textbooks. The report highlighted that the textbooks introduced by the state government lacked activities that could help develop critical thinking in children. The NCERT team also observed that though attempts were made to connect with day-to-day experiences of children, it needed to be made more extensive.
The state government adopted NCERT textbooks for Class 9 from 2017 and PU courses from the 2016 academic year. However, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait said NCERT textbooks (for English and Science) have been adopted for Class 6, 7 and 8 from the 2018-19 academic year. "The Department of State Education Research and Training has already completed the translation work and even the print orders have been given as per tender for Classes 6, 7 and 8," he said. "By the time the NCERT report reached the state, the textbooks revised by Prof Baraguru
Ramachandrappa were already implemented... a lot of objections were raised over the content and factual errors. Even the NCERT highlighted several such issues. But the state was unable to make changes and hence this committee has been constituted," Arun Shahpur told Express.According to the committee members, they have to study the state syllabus textbooks of all subjects from Classes 1 to 10 and compare it with NCERT textbooks. "We need to recommend which part can be retained and which part should be taken from NCERT," he said.Meanwhile, this legislature committee has the power to constitute a sub-committee consisting of academicians.
What happens if New Education Policy is implemented?
According to sources, the panel headed by Dr Kasturirangan constituted to draft the New Education Policy is expected to submit its report in April/May 2018. This policy, when implemented, is for the entire country. In that case, the report submitted by the legislature committee constituted by the state government will not have any impact.