ISRO, NEP chiefs to head teams developing national curriculum for schools

The Union education ministry on Tuesday constituted a 12-member committee to develop a new curriculum for school, early childhood, teacher and adult education headed by National Education Policy 2020 drafting committee chairperson and former ISRO chairman K Kasturirangan. The panel has been tasked with developing four national curriculum networks (NCFs) in line with the recommendations of NEP 2020. This fifth NCF comes after a gap of 16 years, ministry officials say. NCFs serve as a guideline for syllabus, textbook and teaching practices for schools in India.

The other members in the panel include Chancellor of National Institute of Education Planning and Administration, Mahesh Chandra Pant; Chairman of National Book Trust, Govind Prasad Sharma; Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia Najma Akhtar; Vice-Chancellor of Central Tribal University of Andhra Pradesh T V Kattimani; Chairperson of IIM Jammu Milind Kamble and guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar Michel Danino; Jagbir Singh, Chancellor of the Central University of Punjab, Bathinda; Manjul Bhargava, American mathematician of Indian origin; M K Sridhar, trainer and social activist; Dhir Jhingran, founder-director of Language and Learning Foundation (LLF); and Shankar Maruwada, co-founder and CEO at EkStep Foundation.

"The committee will discuss different aspects of school education, early childhood care and education (ECCE), teacher education and adult education, keeping in focus all the recommendations of the NEP-2020 related to these four areas for proposing curriculum reforms," an education ministry official said. The new curriculum development will not be a top-down exercise. Instead, district-level consultations will be conducted after states and union territories come up with their own curriculum before the NCF is put into place, officials said. The implications of situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic shall also be considered by the committee, they added.

"The committee also will discuss the position papers finalised by the national focus groups on different aspects of all the above four areas. The panel will draw inputs from state curriculum frameworks received on the tech platform for the NCFs," the official said.

"While convening its meetings, the committee may invite subject experts, scholars, educationists, etc. as and when required and deliberate and decide upon the course of actions with the objective to meet the timelines of the strategy for the development of NCF," he added. The committee will finalise NCFs after incorporating suggestions received from various stakeholders such as states, union territories, and the meetings of the executive committee and general body (GB) of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the Central Advisory Board on Education.

"The tenure of the national steering committee will be three years. Director NCERT shall assist the SC to complete its module. The terms of reference for the panel may be expanded as per the requirement," the official added.