NEW DELHI: Delhi school principals and relevant stakeholders believe that the announcement made by the education ministry regarding two board examinations every year, as per the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF), will have to be withdrawn before the new academic session as the schools may face significant difficulty besides putting additional burden on students.
Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on August 23 announced that board examinations for grades 10 and 12 will now be conducted twice a year from academic session 2024-25. The minister had unveiled the changes in the new curriculum framework in keeping with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
As per the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE), students in grades 11 and 12 will have to study at least two languages out of which one has to be an Indian language. Also, the students will now have more combinations of subjects while choosing their stream.
Dr Ameeta Wattal, Chairperson & Executive Director Education, Innovations & Training DLF Schools said, “These are essentially NCF recommendations. It takes a while to decide such matters. The ministry is still considering the proposal. We are told that the second exam proposed by the NCF will be an improvement exam for students and the best scores of the two exams will be retained.”
“Students will be studying for four exams even after their boards instead of enjoying any break. Students already have to study for JEE, NEET, CUET and several other exams. This improvement exam will be an addition, further stressing and affecting the mental health of children,” she added.
Meanwhile, Bharat Arora, President Action Committee of unaided private schools said, “The subject combinations offered in the new framework curriculum are good but teacher availability will be a task. We just hope that the board exams are held smoothly without any disruptions affecting the classrooms.”
As per the NCF document, the curriculum aims at developing linguistic proficiency for academic use in three languages by age 15 (Grade 10). At least two out of these three languages should be languages native to India. At least one language native to India will be studied at the ‘literature level.’