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

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