TOPIC
: NATIONAL CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK 2005
The Executive
Committee of NCERT had taken the decision, at its meeting held on 14 and19 July
2004, to revise the National Curriculum Framework, following the statement made
by the Hon’ble Minister of Human Resource Development in the Lok Sabha that the
Council should take up such a revision. Subsequently, the Education Secretary,
Ministry of HRD communicated to the Director of NCERT the need to review the
National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE – 2000) in the light
of the report, Learning Without Burden (1993). In the context of these
decisions, a National Steering Committee, chaired by Prof. Yash Pal and 21
National Focus Groups were set up. Membership of these committees included
representatives of institutions of advanced
Learning,
NCERT’s own faculty, school teachers and non-governmental organizations. Consultations
were held in all parts of the country, in addition to five major regional seminars
held at the NCERT’s Regional Institute of Education in Mysore, Ajmer, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar
and Shillong. Consultations with state Secretaries, SCERTs and examination
Boards were
carried out. A national conference of rural teachers was organized to seek
their advice. Advertisements were issued in national and regional newspapers
inviting public opinion, and a large number of responses were received.
The revised
National Curriculum Framework (NCF) opens with a quotation from Rabindranath
Tagore’s essay, Civilisation and Progress, in which the poet reminds us
that a’ creative spirit’ and ‘generous joy’ are key in childhood, both of which
can be distorted by
an unthinking
adult world. ‘Creative spirit’ and ‘generous joy’ are key in childhood, both of
which can be distorted by
an unthinking adult
world.
NCF proposes
five guiding principles for curriculum development:
(i)
connecting knowledge to life outside the school;
(ii) ensuring that learning shifts
away from rote methods;
(iii) enriching the curriculum so
that it goes beyond textbooks;
(iv) making examinations more flexible and
integrating them with classroom life; and
(v) nurturing an
overriding identity informed by caring concerns within the democratic polity of
the country.
All our
pedagogic efforts during the primary classes greatly depend on professional planning
and the significant expansion of Early Childhood Care and Education
(ECCE).Indeed, the revision of primary school syllabi and textbooks needs to be
undertaken in the
light of the well-known
principles of ECCE.
In all the four
familiar areas of the school curriculum, i.e. language, mathematics, science
and social sciences, significant changes are recommended with a view to making education
more relevant to the present day and future needs, and in order to alleviate
the stress with which children are coping today.
In language, a
renewed attempt to implement the three-language formula is suggested, along with
an emphasis on the recognition of children’s mother tongues, including tribal languages,
as the best medium of education. The multilingual character of Indian society should
be seen as a resource to promote multilingual proficiency in every child, which
includes proficiency in
English.
The teaching of
mathematics should enhance the child’s resources to think and reason, to visualize
and handle abstractions, to formulate and solve problems. The teaching of
science should be recast so that it enables children to examine and analyse
everyday experiences.
In the social
sciences, the approach proposed in the NCF recognises disciplinary markers while
emphasising integration on significant themes, such as water. A paradigm shift
is recommended, proposing the study of the social sciences from the perspective
of marginalised groups. Gender justice and a sensitivity towards issues related
to SC and ST
Communities and
minority sensibilities must inform all sectors of the social sciences. Civics should
be recast as political science, and the significance of history as a shaping
influence on the child’s conception of the past and civic identity should be
recognised.
This NCF draws attention to
four other curricular areas: work, the arts and heritage crafts, health and
physical education, and peace.
Examination reforms
constitute the most important systemic measure to be taken for curricular
renewal and to find a remedy for the growing problem of psychological pressure that
children and their parents feel, especially in Classes X and XII. Specific
measures include
changing the
typology of the question paper so that reasoning and creative abilities replace
memorisation as the basis of evaluation, and integration of examinations with
classroom life by encouraging transparency and internal assessment. The stress
on pre-board
examinations
must be reversed, and strategies enabling children to opt for different levels of
attainment should be encouraged to overcome the present system of generalized classification
into ‘pass’ and ‘fail’ categories.
NCF
2005 has 5chapters
1.
Perspective
2.
Learning and Knowledge
3.
Curricular Areas, School Stages and
Assessment
4.
School and Classroom Environment
5.
Systemic Reforms
The review of the National Curriculum Framework,
2000 was initiated specifically to address the problem of curriculum load on
children. A committee appointed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development
in the early 1990s had analysed this problem, tracing its roots to the system’s
tendency to treat information as knowledge. In its report, Learning Without
Burden, the committee pointed out that learning at school cannot become a
joyful experience unless we change our perception of the child as a receiver of
knowledge and move beyond the convention of using textbooks as the basis for
examination.
Learning Without
Burden recommended
a major change in the design of syllabi and textbooks, and also a change
in the social ethos, which places stress on children to become
aggressively competitive and exhibit precocity. In spite of the
recommendations of the NPE, 1986 to identify competencies and values to
be nurtured at different stages, school education came to be driven more
and more by high-stake examinations based on information-loaded
textbooks.
Despite the review of the Curriculum
Framework in 2000, the vexed issues of curriculum load and the tyranny of
examinations remained unresolved. The current review exercise takes into
cognizance both positive and negative developments in the field, and attempts
to address the future requirements of school education at the turn of the
century. In this endeavour, several interrelated dimensions have been kept in
mind, namely, the aims of education, the social milieu of children, the nature
of knowledge in its broader sense, the nature of human development, and the
process of human learning. The term National Curriculum Framework is often
wrongly construed to mean that an instrument of uniformity is being proposed.
The intention as articulated in the NPE, 1986 and the Programme of Action (PoA)
1992 was quite the contrary. NPE proposed a national framework for curriculum
as a means of evolving a national system of education capable of responding to
India’s diversity of geographical and cultural milieus while ensuring a common
core of values along with academic components. “The NPE - PoA envisaged a child-centred
approach to promote universal enrolment and universal retention of
children up to 14 years of age and substantial improvement in the quality of education
in the school” (PoA, P. 77). The PoA further elaborated on this vision of NPE
by emphasizing relevance, flexibility and quality as characteristics of the National
Curriculum Framework. Thus, both these documents envisioned the National
Curriculum Framework as a means of modernising the system of education .
Our current
concern in curriculum development and reform is to make it an inclusive and
meaningful experience for children, alongwith the effort to move away from a
textbook culture. This requires a fundamental change in how we think of
learners and the process of learning. Hence the need to engage in detail with
the underpinnings and implications of ‘childcentred’education. ‘Child-centred’
pedagogy means giving primacy to children’s experiences, their voices, and
their active participation. This kind of pedagogy requires us to plan learning
in keeping with children’s psychological development and interests. The
learning plans therefore must respond to physical, cultural and social
preferences within the wide diversity of characteristics and needs.
Our school
pedagogic practices, learning tasks, and the texts we create for learners tend
to focus on the socialisation of children and on the ‘receptive’ features of
children’s learning.
Learning is active and social in its
character. The
curriculum must
provide appropriate challenges and create enabling opportunities for students
to experience17success in learning and achievement to the best of their potential.
Teaching and learning processes in the classroom should be planned to respond
to the diverse
needs of students.
Critical
Pedagogy
Teacher and
student engagement is critical in the classroom because it has the power to
define whose knowledge will become a part of school-related knowledge and whose
voices will shape it. children learn out of school — their capacities, learning
abilities, and knowledge base — and bring to school is important to further
enhance the learning process. This is all the more critical for children from
underprivileged backgrounds, especially girls, as the worlds they inhabit and
their realities are under represented in school knowledge.
Curricular areas
Work, peace, and
health and physical education. All three have a fundamental significance for
economic, social and personal development. Schools have a major role to play in
ensuring that children are socialised into a culture of
self-reliance,resourcefulness, peace-oriented values and health.
LANGUAGE
Children will
receive multilingual education from the outset. The three-language formula
needs to be implemented in its spirit, promoting
multilingual
communicative abilities for a multilingual country.
• In the
non-Hindi-speaking states, children learn Hindi. In the case of Hindi speaking
states, children learn a language not spoken in their area.
Sanskrit may
also be studied as a Modern Indian Language (MIL) in addition to these
languages.
• At later
stages, study of classical and foreign languages may be introduced.
Development of
life skills suc h as critical thinking skills, interpersonal communication
skills, negotiation/refusal skills, decision making/ problem-solving skills,and
coping and self-management skills is also very critical for dealing with the
demands and challenges of everyday life.
MATHEMATICS
Developing
children's abilities for mathematisation is the main goal of mathematics
education. The narrow aim of school mathematics is to develop 'useful' capabilities,
particularly those relating to numeracy–numbers, number operations, measurements,
decimals and percentages. As mathematics is a compulsory subject at the secondary
stage, access to quality mathematics education is the right of every child.
Children understand the basic structure of Mathematics: Arithmetic, algebra,
geometry and trigonometry, the basic content areas of school
Mathematics, all
offer a methodology for abstraction, structuration and generalisation. Having
children develop a positive attitude towards, and a liking for, Mathematics at
the primary stage is as important, if not more than the cognitive skills and
concepts that they acquire.
SCIENCE
Science is a
dynamic, expanding body of knowledge, covering ever-new domains of experience. In
a progressive forward-looking society, science can play a truly liberating
role, helping people escape from the vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance and
superstition. The advances in science and technology have transformed
traditional fields of work such as agriculture and industry, and led to the
emergence of wholly new fields of work. People today are faced with an
increasingly fast-changing world where the most important skills are
flexibility, innovation and creativity. These different imperatives have to be
kept in mind in
shaping science Good
science education is true to the child, true
to life and true to
science education.
The
Curriculum at different Stages
Consistent with
the criteria given above, the objectives, content, pedagogy and assessment for
different stages of the curriculum are summarised below:
Primary stage:- the child
should be engaged in joyfully exploring the world around and harmonizing with
it. The objectives at this stage are to nurture the curiosity of the child
about the world (natural environment, artifacts and people), to have the child engage
in exploratory and hands-on activities for acquiring the basic cognitive and
psychomotor skills
through
observation, classification, inference, etc.; to emphasise design and
fabrication, estimation and measurement as a prelude to the development of technological
and quantitative skills at later stages; and
to develop basic
language skills: speaking, reading and writing not only for science but also
through science.
Science and social science
should be integrated as 'environmental studies' as at present, with health as
an important component. Throughout the primary stage, there should be no formal
periodic tests, no awarding of grades or marks, and no detention.
Upper primary
stage:- the child should be engaged in learning
the principles of science through familiar experiences, working with hands to
design simple technological units and modules (e.g. designing
and making a
working model of a windmill to lift weights) and continuing to learn more about
the environment and health, including reproductive and sexual health, through
activities and surveys. Scientific
concepts are to
be arrived at mainly from activities and experiments.
Science content at this
stage is not to be regarded as a diluted version of secondary school science.
Group activities, discussions with peers and teachers, surveys, organisation of
data and their display through exhibitions, etc. in schools and the
neighbourhood
should be important components of pedagogy. There should be continuous as well
as periodic assessment (unit tests, term-end tests). The system of 'direct'
grades should be adopted. There should be no detention. Every child who attends
eight years of school should be eligible to enter Class IX.
Secondary
stage:- students should be engaged in learning
science as a composite discipline, in working with hands and tools to design
more
advanced
technological modules than at the upper primary stage, and in activities and
analyses on issues concerning the environment and health, including reproductive
and sexual health. Systematic experimentation as a tool to discover/verify
theoretical principles, and working on locally significant projects involving
science and technology, are to be important parts of the curriculum at this
stage.
Higher secondary
stage:-
science should be introduced as separate disciplines, with emphasis on experiments/technology
and problem solving. The current two streams, academic and vocational, being
pursued as per
NPE-1986, may require a fresh look in the present scenario. Students may be
given the option of choosing the subjects of their interest freely, though it
may not be feasible to offer all the different subjects in every school. The
curriculum load should be
rationalised to
avoid the steep gradient between secondary and higher secondary syllabi. At
this stage, the core topics of a discipline, taking into account recent advances
in the field, should be identified carefully and treated with appropriate
rigour and depth. The tendency to cover a large number of topics of the discipline
superficially should be avoided.
Higher
Secondary School:-The status of the academic and vocational streams at
the higher secondary stage needs to be reviewed in view of the continued
preoccupation with and influence of the board and entrance examinations, and in
view of the continued privilege given to the so-called academic stream and the failure of the vocational stream
to take off.
During this period of two years students make choices based on their interests,
aptitudes and needs regarding their future life.
The
possibilities of choosing optional courses of study for exploring and
understanding different areas of knowledge, both in relation to one's interest
and one's future career, is integral to this stage. Exploring
disciplines and
approaching problems and issues from rich interdisciplinary perspectives are
possible at this stage. There is a need to allow for such investigations to
take place between and outside the 'subjects' chosen for study.
Total
homework time
Primary: No
homework up to Class II and two
hours a week
from Class III.
Middle school:
One hour a day (about five to six
hours a week).
Secondary and
Higher Secondary: Two hours a day
(about 10 to 12
hours a week). Teachers need to
work together to
plan and rationalise the amount of
homework that they give
children.
MAJOR SHIFTS
From To
• Teacher
centric, stable designs •
Learner centric, flexible process • Teacher direction and
decisions • Learner
autonomy
• Teacher
guidance and monitoring • Facilitates,supports
and encourages learning
•
Passive reception in learning • Active
participation in learning
•
Learning within the four walls of • Learning in the wider social context
the
class room
•
Knowledge as "given" and fixed • Knowledge as it evolves and is
created
•
Disciplinary focus
• Multidisciplinary,
educational focus
•
Linear exposure Multiple and divergent exposure
• Appraisal, short,
few
Multifarious, continuous
CHAPTER 1
• Strengthening a
national system of education in a pluralistic society.
• Reducing the
curriculum load based on insights provided in 'Learning Without Burden'.
• Systemic
changes in tune with curricular reforms.
• Curricular
practices based on the values enshrined in the Constitution, such as social
justice, equality, and secularism.
• Ensuring
quality education for all children.
• Building a
citizenry committed to democratic practices, values, sensitivity towards gender
justice, problems faced by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, needs
of the disabled, and capacities to participate in economic and political
processes.
CHAPTER 2
• Reorientation
of our per ception of learners and learning.
• Holistic
approach in the treatment of learners' development and learning.
• Creating an
inclusive environment in the classroom for all students.
• Learner
engagement for constr uction of knowledge and fostering of creativity.
• Active
learning through the experiential mode.
• Adequate room
for voicing children's thoughts, curiosity, and questions in cur ricular
practices.
• Connecting
knowledge across disciplinary boundaries to provide a broader frame work for insightful
construction of knowledge.
• Forms of
learner engagement — observing, exploring, discovering , analysing, critical
reflection, etc. — are as important as the content of knowledge.
• Activities for
developing critical perspectives on socio-cultural realities need to find space
in curricular practices.
• Local
knowledge and children's experiences are essential components of text books and
pedagogic practices.
• Children
engaged in undertaking environment-related projects may contribute to
generation of knowledge that could help create a transparent public database on
India's environment.
• The school
years are a period of rapid development, with changes and shifts inchildren's
capabilities, attitudes and interests that have implications for choosing and
organising the content and process of knowledge.
CHAPTER 3
Language
• Language
skills — speech and listening, reading and writing — cut across school subjects
and disciplines. Their foundational role in children's construction of
knowledge right from elementary classes through senior secondary classes needs
to be recognised.
• A renewed
effort should be made to implement the three-language formula, emphasizing the
recognition of children's home language(s) or mother tongue(s) as the best
medium of instruction. These include tribal languages.
• English needs
to find its place along with other Indian languages.
• The
multilingual character of Indian society should be seen as a resource for the
enrichment of school life.
Mathematics
•
Mathematisation (ability to think logically, formulate and handle abstractions)
rather than 'knowledge' of mathematics (formal and mechanical procedures) is
the main goal of teaching mathematics.
• The teaching
of mathematics should enhance children's ability to think and reason, to visualize
and handle abstractions, to formulate and solve problems. Access to quality
mathematics education is the right of every child.
Science
• Content,
process and language of science teaching must be commensurate with the
learner's age-range and cognitive reach.
• Science
teaching should engage the learners in acquiring methods and processes that
will nurture their curiosity and creativity, par ticularly in relation to the
environment.
• Science
teaching should be placed in the wider context of children;s environment to
equip them with the requisite knowledge and skills to enter the world of work.
• Awareness of
environmental concerns must permeate the entire school curriculum.
Social
Sciences
• Social science
content needs to focus on conceptual understanding rather than lining up facts to
be memorised for examination, and should equip children with the ability to
think independently and reflect critically on social issues.
•
Interdisciplinary approaches, promoting key national concerns such as gender,
justice, human rights, and sensitivity to marginalised groups and minorities.
• Civics should
be recast as political science, and the significance of history as a shaping
influence on the children's conception of the past and civic identity should be
recognised.
Work
• School
curricula from the pre-primary stage to the senior secondary stage need to be reconstructed
to realise the pedagogic potential of work as a pedagogic medium in knowledge
acquisition, developing values and multiple-skill formation.
Art
• Arts (folk and
classical forms of music and dance, visual arts, puppetry, clay work, theatre, etc.)
and heritage crafts should be recognised as integral components of the school
curriculum.
• Awareness of
their relevance to personal, social, economic and aesthetic needs should be built
among parents, school authorities and administrators.
• The arts
should comprise a subject at every stage of school education.
Peace
• Peace-oriented
values should be promoted in all subjects throughout the school years with the
help of relevant activities.
• Peace education
should form a component of teacher education.
Health
and Physical Education
• Health and
physical education are necessary for the overall development of learners.
Through health and physical education programmes (including yoga), it may be
possible to handle successfully the issues of enrolment, retention and
completion of school.
Habitat
and Learning
• Environmental
education may be best pursued by infusing the issues and concerns of then environment
into the teaching of different disciplines at all levels while ensuring that
adequate time is earmarked for pertinent activities.
CHAPTER 4
• Availability
of minimum infrastructure and material facilities, and support for planning a flexible
daily schedule, are critical for improved teacher performance.
• A school
culture that nurtures children's identities as 'learners' enhances the
potential and interests of each child.
• Specific
activities ensuring participation of all children — abled and disabled — are
essential conditions for learning by all.
• The value of
self-discipline among learners through democratic functioning is as relevant as
ever.
• Participation
of community members in sharing knowledge and experience in a subject area helps
in forging a partnership between school and community.
• Reconceptualisation
of learning resources in terms of
- textbooks
focused on elaboration of concepts, activities, problems and exercises encouraging
reflective thinking and group work.
- supplementary
books, workbooks, teachers' handbooks, etc. based on fresh thinking and new
perspectives.
- multimedia and
ICT as sources for two-way interaction rather than one-way reception.
- school library
as an intellectual space for teachers, learners and members of the community to
deepen their knowledge and connect with the wider world.
• Decentralised
planning of school calendar and daily schedule and autonomy for teacher professionalism
practices are basic to creating a learning environment.
CHAPTER 5
• Quality
concern, a key feature of systemic reform, implies the system's capacity to
reform itself by enhancing its ability to remedy its own weaknesses and to
develop new capabilities.
• It is
desirable to evolve a common school system to ensure comparable quality in
different regions of the country and also to ensure that when children of
different backgrounds study together, it improves the overall quality of
learning and enriches the school ethos.
• A broad
framework for planning upwards, beginning with schools for identifying focus areas
and subsequent consolidation at the cluster and block levels, could form a decentralized
planning strategy at the district level.
• Meaningful
academic planning has to be done in a participatory manner by headmasters and
teachers.
• Monitoring
quality must be seen as a process of sustaining interaction with individual schools
in terms of teaching–learning processes.
• Teacher
education programmes need to be reformulated and strengthened so that the teacher
can be an :
- encouraging,
supportive and humane facilitator in teaching–learning situations to enable learners
(students) to discover their talents, to realise their physical and
intellectual potentialities to the fullest, to develop character and desirable
social and human values to function as responsible citizens; and
- active member
of a group of persons who make conscious efforts for curricular renewal so that
it is relevant to changing social needs and the personal needs of learners.
• Reformulated
teacher education programmes that place thrust on the active involvement of learners
in the process of knowledge construction, shared context of learning, teacher
as a facilitator of knowledge construction, multidisciplinary nature of
knowledge of teacher education, integration theory and practice dimensions, and
engagement with issues and concerns of contemporary Indian society from a
critical perspective.
• Centrality of
language proficiency in teacher education and an integrated model of teacher education
for strengthening professionalisation of teachers assume significance.
• In-service
education needs to become a catal yst for change in school practices.
• The Panchayati
Raj system
should be strengthened by evolving a mechanism to regulate the functioning of
parallel bodies at the village level so that democratic participation in development
can be realised.
• Reducing
stress and enhancing success in examinations necessitate:
- a shift away
from content-based testing to problem solving skills and understanding. The
prevailing typology of questions asked needs a radical change.
- a shift towards
shorter examinations.
- an examination
with a 'flexible time limit'.
- setting up of
a single nodal agency for coordinating the design and conduct of entrance examinations.
•
Institutionalisation of work-centred education as an integrated part of the
school curriculum from the pre-primary to the +2 stage is expected to lay the
necessary foundation for reconceptualising and restructuring vocational
education to meet the challenges of a globalised economy.
• Vocational
Education and Training (VET) need to be conceived and implemented in a mission
mode, involving the establishment of separate VET centres and institutions from
the level of village clusters and blocks to sub-divisional/district towns and
metropolitan areas in collaboration with the nation wide spectrum of facilities
already existing in this sector.
• Availability
of multiple textbooks to widen teachers' choices and provide for the diversity
in children's needs and interests.
• Sharing of
teaching experiences and diverse classroom practices to generate new ideas and
facilitate innovation and experimentation.
• Development of
syllabi, textbooks and teaching-learning resources could be carried out in a
decentralised and participatory manner involving teachers, experts from universities,
NGOs and teachers' organisations.
REFERENCES
v www.ncert.nic.in
