Disrupted academic year: CBSE to reduce burden, crunch syllabus for Classes 9 to 12

Last week, the CISCE had also announced a reduction in syllabus for secondary and senior secondary students by 25 per cent to “make up for the loss in instructional hours during the current session 2020-21”.

The decision was announced by Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal on Twitter.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to rationalise the curriculum for classes 9 to 12 for the year 2020-2021 to ease the burden on students in a disrupted academic calendar. The decision was announced by Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal on Twitter.

“Considering the importance of learning achievement, it has been decided to rationalize syllabus up to 30 per cent by retaining the core concepts. Looking at the extraordinary situation prevailing in the country and the world, CBSE was advised to revise the curriculum and reduce course load for the students of Class 9th to 12th,” the minister tweeted in the afternoon.

The board was likely to make this move and had asked NCERT to suggest topics and themes which are “either repeated or overlapped or learning outcomes related to it are being covered under other chapters”, The Indian Express had reported on Tuesday.

Last week, the CISCE had also announced a reduction in syllabus for secondary and senior secondary students by 25 per cent to “make up for the loss in instructional hours during the current session 2020-21”.

Among the topics dropped for class 10 students in Social Science include chapters on “Democracy and Diversity”, “Gender, Religion and Caste”, “Popular Struggles and Movements” and “Challenges to Democracy”. In Science, the topics dropped include those on sources of energy, the human eye and magnetic effects of electric current.

For classes 11 and 12, among the topics dropped are “Citizenship”, “Nationalism”, “Secularism”, “Federalism” and “Planning Commission and Five-Year Plans” in Political Science; “Peasants, Zamindars and the State” and “Understanding Partition” in History; and “Binomial Theorem” and “Mathematical Reasoning” in Mathematics.

In a circular to the heads of all affiliated schools, the board stated that teachers are to ensure that topics that have been dropped “are also explained to the students to the extent required to connect different topics”. However, it stated that these topics would not be a part of either internal assessment or the board examination.