In a significant decision, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to drop several chapters on all subjects for secondary and senior secondary level to help students cope up with the academic loss caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the reports, the decision to drop these topics were made after the direction of the HRD ministry which asked the CBSE to reduce the syllabus for classes 9 to 12 by 30 per cent to compensate for the academic loss caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent closure of schools.
In the new Class XI syllabus, chapters on ‘Secularism, federalism, citizenship, nationalism have been deleted.
Many chapters in subjects like Political science and social sciences have been dropped. As per an Indian Express report, sub-sections including ‘Why do we need Local Governments?’ and ‘Growth of Local Government in India’ have also been removed from the curriculum. However, teachers have been asked to teach students regarding their relevance.
Similarly, the class 10 students will not be studying chapters Democracy and diversity, Gender, religion and caste, Popular struggles and movements, Challenges to democracy in their political science course.
The chapters on ‘Democratic rights’ in Political Science and ‘Food security in India’ under Economics have been removed from Class 9 syllabus. The chapter in History is “Understanding Partition” is also removed from Class 12 syllabus.
For CBSE Class X, several chapters have been deleted from all subjects, English Literature, Grammar, Hindi, Mathematics, Science, Social Sciences, Home Science and Computer Applications. A detailed list of deleted chapters on all subjects of Class X was shared by India Today in a report.
The revised curriculum of secondary (Class 9 and 10) and Senior Secondary (class 11, 12) can be seen here.
HRD Minister says the decision is aimed at course rationalisation
Union HRD Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal in a tweet said that they have decided to rationalise the syllabus up to 30 per cent by retaining the core concepts considering the importance of learning achievement.
“Looking at the extraordinary situation prevailing in the country and the world, CBSE was advised to revise the curriculum and reduce course load for the students of Class 9th to 12th,” he added.
In an official statement, the CBSE has said, “The Heads of Schools and Teachers may ensure that the topics that have been reduced are also explained to the students to the extent required to connect different topics. However, the reduced syllabus will not be part of the topics for Internal Assessment and year-end Board Examination.”
Not just CBSE, earlier, the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) had also announced to reduce their syllabus for class 10 and 12 by 25 per cent to make up for the loss in instructional hours during the current academic session 2020-21.
