NEW DELHI, Aug 23: Board exams twice a year, mandatory studying of Indian languages and increased number of minimum subjects for classes 9-12 are among the recommendations made in the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF).
The NCF has been prepared according to the new National Education Policy (NEP) by the national steering committee, headed by former ISRO chairman K Kasturirangan.
According to NCF document, board examinations will be conducted twice a year and students will get an option to retain their best score.
Aiming to make the exams “easier” rather than “high stakes”, the boards have also been asked to develop capacities to be able to conduct “on-demand” examinations in due course of time.
The NCF has also noted that there should be no hard separations between Arts and Sciences, curricular and extra-curricular activities, and vocational and academic streams.
“Board examinations should be offered at least twice a year to ensure that students have enough time and opportunity to perform well. Students can then appear for a board examination in subjects they have completed and feel ready for.
“This process could be made possible through the creation of a comprehensive test item bank which can be used to create tests using suitable software. This will enable the move towards a system of on-demand examinations in the near future as described in NEP 2020,” the NCF stated.
The Ministry of Education has noted that in the long term, all boards should change to semester or term-based systems, where students can test in a subject as soon as they have completed the subject, which would further reduce the content load being tested in any one examination.
The NCF has also noted that students in classes 9-10 will now have to mandatorily study three languages, including two Indian native ones, and students in classes 11-12 will have to study two languages, including one Indian.
At present, class 9 and 10 students study two mandatory languages and class 11 and 12 students study one language.
So far, the students from 9 to 12 had to mandatorily study five subjects with an option of adding one additional subject. According to the recommendations made in NCF, the number of mandatory subjects will be seven for classes 9-10 and six for classes 11-12.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan handed over the NCF to the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on Wednesday during a joint meeting of the National Oversight Committee (NOC) and National Syllabus and Teaching-Learning Material Committee (NSTC), thereby paving the way for the development of the school syllabus and textbooks.
According to the curricular structure defined in NCF for classes 9 and 10, all schools need to offer three languages and “at least two of which are native to India”.
“Apart from the three languages, students are to study seven other subjects from the groupings of mathematics and computational thinking, social science, science, art education, physical education and well-being, vocational education, and interdisciplinary areas.
“However, board exams will be conducted for seven subjects, including the languages, while for art education, physical education and well-being, vocational education the mode of assessment will be internal exam with external examiner,” the document stated.
Currently, for classes 11 and 12 study of only one language is mandatory. “For classes 11 and 12, students need to study two subjects from Language Education (called Group 1), at least one of which must be a language native to India. Literature subjects are also contained in Language Education at this level,” the document said.
Besides, board exam test developers and evaluators will have to go through university-certified courses before taking up this work.
The new framework has also noted that the current practice of covering textbooks in classroom will be avoided, while stressing that the cost of textbooks should be optimised. (PTI)
