Sudha Murthy, Shankar Mahadevan on 19-member NCERT panel for textbooks

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has brought on board Infosys Foundation chairperson Sudha Murthy, music maestro Shankar Mahadevan, economist Sanjeev Sanyal and 16 others in a new committee it has constituted to revise textbooks according to the new curriculum, a senior official in Delhi said.

The 19-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) will be headed by National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) chancellor MC Pant and develop textbooks for classes 3 to 12. The committee is mandated to prepare the textbooks, and other teaching learning materials, which will, in turn, be published and used by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), as per the terms of reference, the official said.

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“The NSTC will be assisted by Curricular Area Groups (CAGs) in the development of the teaching–learning material for each curricular area. These groups will include appropriate experts for the said subject, and will be formed by the chairperson and the co-chairperson of NSTC, with the assistance of NCERT,” the official said.

The committee will work to align the curriculum with the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) developed by the K Kasturirangan-led steering committee as part of the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

While the final NCF-SE has already been submitted to the Union Ministry of Education, it is yet to be released in the public domain. The draft of the framework was released in April.

The committee is co-chaired by Manjul Bhargav, a professor of mathematics at Princeton University. Its other members include mathematician Sujatha Ramdorai, badminton player U Vimal Kumar, chairperson of Centre for Policy Studies MD Srinivas, and chairperson of Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti Chamu Krishna Shastry.

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The dropping of several topics and portions from NCERT textbooks in May triggered a controversy, with the Opposition blaming the BJP-led Centre for “whitewashing with vengeance”.

At the heart of the controversy was the fact that while the changes made as part of a rationalisation exercise were notified, some of the controversial deletions were not mentioned. This led to allegations about a bid to delete these portions surreptitiously.

Although the NCERT acknowledged that the omissions in the textbooks may have been unintentional, it declined to reverse the deletions. The NCERT said the removals were made based on the recommendations provided by experts.

(With agency inputs)