After HRD Ministry advised to revise the curriculum and reduce course load for the students of Class 9th to 12th, the Central Board of Secondary Education followed the step to cut down 30% of the syllabus from the academic curriculum to make up to the loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
CBSE on Tuesday deleted chapters on federalism, citizenship, nationalism, and secularism from the political science curriculum of Class 11 for the academic year 2020-21.
Apart from these, sub-sections including ‘Why do we need Local Governments?’ and ‘Growth of Local Government in India’ has also been removed from the curriculum. These topics will not be accessed in themselves but teachers have been asked to explain to the students of their relevance with respect to existing topics.
But this move came as a backlash on the decision of dropping topics from the syllabus as many are criticizing the move.
HRD minister Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Thursday in a series of tweets put forth his thoughts on the CBSE’s decision.
“There has been a lot of uninformed commentary on the exclusion of some topics from #CBSESyllabus. The problem with these comments is that they resort to sensationalism by connecting topics selectively to portray a false narrative”
“Similarly, some of the excluded topics in #Maths are Properties of Determinants, Consistency, Inconsistency, and Number of Solutions of System of Linear Equations by Examples and Binomial Probability Distribution”.
“In #Biology, portions of Mineral Nutrition, Digestion & Absorption have been excluded. It can be no one’s argument that these topics have also being excluded by malice or some grand designs which only partisan minds can decipher”.
“It is our humble request: #Education is our sacred duty towards our children. Let us leave politics out of #education and make our politics more educated”.
“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 tweeted.
On Wednesday evening CBSE released a press note regarding reduction/rationalization of syllabus from classes 9th to 12th stating that the move has been interpreted differently Contrary to some of the impressions being created it is clarified that –
1 The rationalization of syllabus up to 30, has been undertaken by the Board for nearly 190 subjects of class IX to XII for the academic session 2020.21 as a onetime measure only the objectives to reduce the exam stress of students due to the prevailing health emergency situation and prevent learning gaps.
2 The Board has clarified that no question shall be asked from the reduced syllabus in the Board Exams 20.21
3 The schools have also been directed to follow the Alternative Academic Calendar prepared by NCERT for transacting the curriculum Therefore each of the topics that have been wrongly mentioned in media as deleted have been covered under Alternative Academic Calendar of NCERT which is already force for all the affiliated schools of the Board.
4 It is again reiterated that the topics being mentioned as dropped are either being covered by the rationalized syllabus or in the Alternative Academic Calendar of NCERT.
