New Delhi, Aug 10 — As recommended under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has brought out the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) 2022 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023, the Lok Sabha was informed on Monday.
Minister of State (MoS) for Education Sukanta Majumdar, in a written reply to a question, said that these frameworks provide the basis for stage-wise and subject-wise curricular goals, competencies, learning outcomes, syllabi, textbooks, pedagogy and assessment.
He said that NCERT, while reprinting its textbooks every year, updates them in alignment with relevant feedback from students, teachers, and other stakeholders, without making any structural changes. For this purpose, if required, NCERT also invites experts to finalise the changes.
Earlier in April, the Education Ministry declared NCERT as a ‘Deemed to be University’. Majumdar, in reply to another question, said the status of Institution Deemed to be University will strengthen the NCERT to promote educational research and innovation and collaborate with national and international agencies.
It will further reinforce its role as a think tank. As a national resource institution engaged in providing technical support to the Central Government as well as State Governments, he said.
The NCERT’s application for the grant of Institution Deemed to be University status was examined by the University Grants Commission (UGC) through its Expert Committee as per the provisions of the UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2023.
The Minister of State said that for developing National Curriculum Frameworks, a National Steering Committee was constituted, which sought inputs for the National Curriculum Frameworks from diverse stakeholders, including teachers, parents, students, scholars, and educational institutions.
This process benefited from the engagement of over 13 lakh interested citizens, including students and parents at the national level through a citizen-centric mobile app survey, and over 1.5 lakh teachers, parents, students, and educationists at the state level through a mobile app survey, said Majumdar.
Over 1,550 district-level consultations in 32 States and Union Territories were conducted. Inputs were also received from 35 groups of institutions, 8,000 stakeholders who attended 12 consultations with Universities and Civil Society Groups, he said.
More than 600 position papers on 25 specifically relevant themes, written by Focus Groups constituted by the States and UTs, which together had over 4,000 experts, and 25 papers from the National Focus Groups by expert groups with over 175 members, constituted by the NCERT, were received, he said.
These inputs were analysed, and relevant suggestions were included in the NCFs. Taking cognisance of these inputs, the NCF-FS was released on October 20, 2022, and NCF-SE was released on August 23, 2023, he said.
As a follow-up to the NCFs, NCERT has constituted the National Syllabus and Teaching-Learning Material Committee (NSTC). Under this Committee, 13 Curricular Area Groups (CAGs) and Textbook Development Teams (TDTs) for all the subjects and grades have been set up. NSTC has been assigned the task of developing teaching-learning material, including textbooks, he said.