Draft Education Policy Suggests Trimming Down School Syllabus

New Delhi: The draft national education policy, currently under evaluation, has emphasised on drastically reducing the school curriculum and ending distinctions between co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.

The policy asks for giving students enough scope and time to experiment with different subjects in a “more hands-on” and experimental way to decide what they enjoy and assess what they want to do with their lives.

1. The content should be reduced in each subject to its core, focusing on key concepts and only essential ideas.

2. The policy suggests that classroom teaching should be more interactive in nature, encouraging students to question.

3. Activities such as arts, crafts and sports, which leads to human and societal advancement, should be made an integral part of the course curriculum. Consequently, there should be no extra-curricular and co-curricular activities.

4. Significantly, the policy has advocated flexibility in the choice of courses and subjects at the secondary level, such as physical education, arts and vocational crafts.

“Continuing holistic development and a wide choice of subjects and courses year to year will be the new distinguishing feature of the secondary school education,” it underlined.

5. The policy also suggested greater integration between the academic and vocational streams so as to help students develop their “own capacities”.

6. “All students will take vocational courses, which will be an integral part of formal curriculum and will learners and in-depth exposure to areas such as agriculture, electronics, local trades and crafts,” it said.

The Centre has called a meeting of all state education ministers later this month to discuss the proposals.

A senior official in the Human Resource Development Ministry said the Central Advisory Board of Education, comprising all state education ministers, academicians and experts from different fields, will meet subsequently to discuss the policy threadbare before arriving at a consensus on its implementation.