Sibal calls for uniform core science syllabus

Manash Pratim Gohain | TNN

New Delhi: Even as state boards debate suggestions to make the class X board exam optional and to shift to a single board system for secondary education in the country, HRD minister Kapil Sibal proposed a core curriculum for maths and science across all school boards on Monday at the annual conference of the Council of Boards of Secondary Education (COBSE). The minister also stressed on the need to teach the national language and English alongside the mother tongue.

“We should set up a system of core curriculum in respect of professional courses. There should be a core curriculum for maths and science and a one-time exam to enter the university system for professional courses. This will ensure level of uniform and equivalence of quality. Subjects relating to environment and others can be different according to the state and city. But why should science and maths be different?’’ he said and asked representatives of the different boards to come up with a roadmap to be implemented in the next three years.

Sibal said the reforms in the education system should be carried out in a way that helps the country to change from being a “recipient of knowledge to producer of knowledge’’, but admitted that it was a “Herculean’’ task.

Std XII marks may become crucial for IIT admission
Marks scored in the Std XII board exams may become a key factor along with a student’s performance in the joint entrance examination (JEE) for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology by 2011

Sibal bats for three-language system in schools

New Delhi: Advocating a three-language system in school education, Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal said on Monday that schools need to emphasize on teaching Hindi and English along with the mother tongue so that students can integrate easily. “We need to ensure that our children are fluent in all three languages, English, Hindi and the mother tongue, because the mother tongue would help in cultural integration, Hindi in national integration and English would help us globally.’’

The minister urged the representatives of the boards to make a move towards a grading system “as soon as possible’’. “The grade system will be implemented in CBSE schools soon so that there is no difference between children who score 99% and 98%. Once this is first implemented in the CBSE schools, we will see the paradigm shift,’’ he said.

“I shudder to think how 41 boards in this country will bring this change. How do we interact with each other? We should break the walls and prepare our children for the future.’’ He also placed the proposal for discussion of moving away from state boards to four regional boards with equivalent standards, adding that it was an idea. While welcoming Sibal’s proposal for a core curriculum in maths and science, several board representatives pointed out that the grading system and his plan to do away with the class X exam had their own disadvantages and wondered how the plans could be applied uniformly across the country.

D Mahanta, secretary of the Secondary Education Board of Assam, provided the classic example of his state, which had experimented with optional class X exams from 1960 to 1970 before doing away with it. “The system which we are now proposing is more or less the same which we experimented with for 10 years before abolishing it. We had a system of class X, which was optional, followed by a board exam before going to the undergraduate programme. We found no homogeneity among students who opted out of class X and those who took the exams. In fact, the students who opted out of the class X exams barely had any option other than staying in the same school and pursuing whatever it offered.’’

The representative of the Bihar board said making the class X exam optional to de-stress a child is ideal for a particular environment. “But 80% of our students are from rural areas whose parents are farmers or labourers and have low levels of awareness. In such a situation, the child won’t study at all,’’ he said.

On a similar note, the representatives from Goa, Manipur, Bengal, Orissa, Meghalaya and Tripura ruled out an optional class X board exam. They also said a single board system with uniform curriculum would dilute the sense of ownership among teachers in the states and it would interfere with preserving the language, script and culture of the states.

Kapil Sibal