NCERT plans to cut syllabus for academic session 2022-2023

(Image: PTI)

For the upcoming academic session 2022-2023, NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) is reportedly planning to cut back the syllabus and textbooks for all classes.

Pursuant to this, NCERT Director-in-Charge Sridhar Srivastava has ordered various heads of department to evaluate the same, involving both in-house and exterior consultants to discuss matters and content that may be excluded from the syllabus, along with submitting a report on the same by December 28.

Coming in the wake of the immense disruption that the pandemic has caused to the regular study system, which is only further exacerbated by the rising cases of the Omicron variant, schools have once resorted to online teaching. "Lightening" the  textbooks is intended to ease out "any struggles" students might face.

The pandemic has time and again, forced boards to reduce syllabus. CBSE reduced the syllabus by up to 30 percent for classes 9-12, for both previous academic sessions (2020-21 and 2021-22).

Telangana board also reduced its syllabus by 30 percent for class 12. Following suit were Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh boards, who chipped the total course content for class 10 and 12 and UPMSP, which reduced coursework for classes 9-12.

The council is reportedly revising the curriculum to bring it in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. NCERT is currently working on preparing textbooks which incorporate the proposed changes for publication for the academic session 2022-23. Textbooks based on the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) will be introduced in the subsequent academic session, namely 2023-24.

Recently, students have urged NCERT to include Northeast history in the curriculum. The council also removed a training manual pertaining to  guidelines on inclusion of transgenders, non-binary from its website, after the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) pointed out anomalies in the document.

The parliamentary panel also urged NCERT to remove “Un-historical facts and distortions” about national heroes and include stories of lesser-known freedom fighters in school textbooks. Alongside, the council was given guidelines for writing history textbooks and providing equal weightage to all periods and events of the past, which include history of Vedas, Sikh and Maratha history.