Education Ministry Holds Meeting For Seeking Inputs For New Curriculum

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 the choice of subjects in secondary classes, reduction of curriculum to core essentials etc.

The Ministry of Education (MoE) on Tuesday held an inter-ministerial meeting for seeking inputs for reconfiguring curricular and pedagogical structure under National Curriculum Framework (NCF), officials said. Senior officials and representatives of all ministries and important bodies, including the National Council of Education and Research Training (NCERT), the Election Commission of India, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), attended the crucial meeting on the development of new curriculum on 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, the need for innovation and generation of new ideas, the 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 in the National Curriculum Framework (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 school education ecosystem," the official said.