India's Education Minister defends the choice of topics deleted from CBSE syllabus

• Amid the ongoing row over the reduction of course syllabus for school students, the Union Cabinet Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal today said that the current debate “resorts to sensationalism by connecting topics selectively to portray a false narrative.”
  
• The Human Resource and Development Ministry clarified that this is a one-time measure, which is being implemented considering the COVID-19 situation.
  
• Apart from the political science topics that have been eliminated, Pokhriyal argued that there are a wide range of topics across subjects like biology and maths etc that have been deleted from the syllabus this year.
  
• Properties of determinants, consistency, inconsistency, and number of solutions of the system of linear equations are some of the mathematics topics that will not be a part of the syllabus this year.

Amid the ongoing row over the reduction of course syllabus for school students, the Union Cabinet Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal today said that the current debate “resorts to sensationalism by connecting topics selectively to portray a false narrative.”


The Human Resource and Development Ministry clarified that this is a one-time measure, which is being implemented considering the COVID-19 situation. The schools have been asked to follow the alternate calendar proposed by the NCERT (National Council Of Educational Research And Training).

“While it's easy to misconstrue exclusion of 3-4 topics like nationalism, local govt, federalism & build a concocted narrative,a wider perusal of different subjects will show that this is happening across subjects,” the ministry said in a tweet.

Apart from the political science topics that have been eliminated, Pokhriyal argued that there are a wide range of topics across subjects like biology and maths etc that have been deleted from the syllabus this year.

“The topics excluded in economics include measures of dispersion, balance of payments deficit, etc while topics excluded in physics are heat engine & refrigerator, heat transfer among others,” he tweeted.

The course syllabus will no longer have topics such as federalism, nationalism and secularism, environmental chemistry for class 11th while the chapters including India’s relations with the neighboring countries, demonetisation will be eliminated from the class 12th syllabus.

The board has also deleted course material on democracy and the challenges, gender and religion, and popular movements in the history for class 10th students, Print reported. Properties of determinants, consistency, inconsistency, and number of solutions of the system of linear equations are some of the mathematics topics that will not be a part of the syllabus this year.

This comes as the course syllabus for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Council for Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) has been reduced by up to 30%.

“The only aim is to relax the stress on students by reducing the syllabus by 30%. This exercise has been carried out following the advice & recommendations of various experts and considering the suggestions received from educationists through our #SyllabusForStudents2020 campaign,” Pokhriyal tweeted.

The changes will be implemented from the 2020-21 academic session.