Kerala SCERT Requests Permission to Create Textbooks for Topics Eliminated from NCERT

SCERT had a committee meeting yesterday to discuss subjects that NCERT had left out to create textbooks for Classes 11 & 12.

on Apr 27, 2023

In order to create and disseminate textbooks to teach material skipped over in Class 11 and 12 textbooks created by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the Kerala State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) has requested permission from the state government.

SCERT had a committee meeting yesterday to discuss subjects that NCERT had left out. They also spoke about the potential for creating more textbooks for pupils.

While this was going on, the content that NCERT had left out of the history and political science textbooks included information on the history of the Mughal Empire, the Gujarat riots, and Mahatma Gandhi's assassination.

According to media sources, the committee has given General Education Minister V Sivankutty permission to prepare, talk about, and decide on the issue with the state government. Pinarayi Vijayan, the chief minister of Kerala, will make the ultimate decision.

The SCERT curriculum steering group thoroughly addressed the "unjustifiable" exclusions for Classes 11 and 12 on Tuesday. The committee also voiced its displeasure over the deletion of chapters and said that the state should save the chapters that were dropped in the name of rationalization.

It is unacceptable to leave out some aspects of history, political science, economics, and sociology. According to the curriculum committee, these deleted sections should be included in Kerala through supplemental textbooks, according to SCERT head M. Jayachandran, as reported by the Times of India. He said it would just take a few months to produce and print the textbooks. Jayachandran said, "So that these supplement books will reach students by August of this year at the latest."

The committee requested that the general education minister speak with the Chief Minister and obtain his approval before SCERT could formally start working on the extra volumes. According to sources, Sivankutty criticized NCERT and the Union government at the conference for altering the substance of textbooks for political reasons. Additionally, NCERT has left out parts of textbooks for Classes 6 to 12, but Kerala only uses NCERT textbooks for Classes 11 and 12. Therefore, the omissions for Classes up to 10 don't matter.