Education ministry meeting to discuss new curriculum structure along NEP 2020 guidelines

The Ministry of Education on Tuesday held an inter-ministerial meeting to seek inputs for reconfiguring the curricular and pedagogical structure of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), officials said. Senior officials and representatives of all ministries and important bodies, including NCERT, Election Commission of India, ICAR, and DRDO, attended the crucial meeting on development of the new curriculum along the lines of the new National Education Policy (NEP).

"The meeting focused on how ministries and organisations can contribute in developing a curriculum framework that is responsive and relevant to the developmental needs and interests of learners at different stages of their development. The officials present were first briefed about how a curriculum framework is prepared, what are its deliverables and what is expected from them," a senior MoE official said.

"Many areas of contribution were subsequently discussed, such as the rapidly changing technology, need for innovation and generation of new ideas, need to focus on crucial areas like climate change, future skill requirements, crucial factors for agricultural growth, knowledge of India, especially in those areas where India is at the forefront for instilling a sense of pride, assistive technology for inclusion, enriching subject knowledge with real-life information, how to promote multilingualism, and integration of sports, fitness and arts," the official added.

The inputs from ministries would help identify and integrate several pertinent areas, skills and competencies into the NCF at relevant stages. "It was also discussed that it would be very helpful if the ministries also point out their own role in taking certain ideas forward by partnering with the school education ecosystem," the official said.

The key deliverables of NCF that were discussed at the meet included early childhood care and education, foundational literacy and numeracy, competency based education, flexibility in choice of subjects in secondary classes, reduction of curriculum to core essentials, reimagining vocational education, identification of core skills, multilingualism, citizenship, values like-appreciation of national heritage, respect for public property, taking care of elders, spirit of service, needs of gifted children, experiential learning, integration of arts and craft, toys, community involvement, etc.

"Given the crucial nature of the work undertaken by the MoE in preparing the new NCF, participants shared their ideas on how they would be able to contribute to the process. Ideas such as leveraging the innovation ecosystem of the Department of Science, understanding the efforts that go into agriculture to bring food on the table, the huge role of gram panchayats in ensuring enrolment and retention in schools, importance of imbibing volunteerism in early years, etc were discussed.

"It was decided that all ministries would soon send written inputs for the National Steering Committee and NCERT to take cognizance of. The ministries were also requested to whole-heartedly participate in and disseminate the web-app based citizen survey being undertaken by NCERT for curriculum development," the official said.

The Digital Survey for National Curriculum is being conducted by the education ministry and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) as part of the public consultation process for the formulation of the NCF.