New Delhi: Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan reviewed the development of school textbooks in accordance with the New Curriculum Framework (NCF) at a meeting here on Thursday.
The meeting came in the backdrop of a delay in coming up with Class-6 textbooks that were supposed to be taught from April and are yet to hit the market.
The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) had earlier announced that new textbooks for Classes 3 and 6 will be introduced from the 2024-25 academic session.
“For the academic year 2024-25, new and engaging textbooks will be introduced in Classes 3 and 6. The textbook development work is in the final phase and nine textbooks for Grades 3 and 6 are already available. The remaining eight will be available very soon,” a senior Ministry of Education (MoE) official said.
The NCERT had an initial aim of releasing the new textbooks based on the NCF 2023 only for Classes 3 and 6 this year. While the textbooks for Class 3 are available in the market, those for Class 6 have been delayed.
It was only this week that the NCERT released new English and Hindi textbooks for Class 6 in the middle of the academic session. The textbooks for the remaining subjects, such as social science, science and mathematics, are not ready yet and schools have been asked to teach the Class-6 students from a bridge programme until then.
“The NEP 2020 aims at providing economically-priced, high-quality textbooks to make learning joyful and stress-free for better learning outcomes. The NCERT is constructing new textbooks for Classes 1 to 12 to fully realise the provisions of the National Education Policy,” the official said.
The official informed that the minister did a detailed review of the progress of the NCERT textbook development with the school education secretary, NCERT director and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) chairman.
Meanwhile, the new English language textbook for Class 6, titled “Poorvi”, has a revamped content with most chapters rooted in an Indian context and with references to Indian culture, traditions and ancient knowledge.
While the old book had stories by non-Indian authors featuring non-Indian characters, the new textbook has most of its content based on Indian settings with Indian characters.
“Bharat” has also been used in the chapter titled “Culture and Tradition” and is used interchangeably with “India”.
According to NCERT officials, textbooks for all classes in accordance with the new curriculum will be ready by 2026.
