CBSE removes chapters on 'Democratic Rights', 'Secularism', 'Demonetisation' from syllabus

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to "completely delete" chapters like - 'Citizenship', 'Nationalism', 'Federalism', and 'Secularism' for class 11 students. Whereas, for class 9 students, the board has 'fully excluded' chapters like - 'Democratic Rights', 'Constitutional Design', 'Popular Struggle Movements', and 'Challenges to Democracy'.

In addition to these, Class 12 students will not be required to study chapters on demonetisation, planning commission, five-year plans, social movements in India, and India's relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

The board has dropped a lot of chapters from other subjects as well. CBSE said the reduced syllabus will not be part of internal assessment and year-end board examination.

The deletions were made on the direction of the education ministry which asked the CBSE board to scrap the syllabus by up to 30 per cent for classes 9 to 12 for the academic year 2020-21 to reduce course load on students.

The Minister of Human Resource Development, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank also tweeted on this matter, "Considering the importance of learning achievement, it has been decided to rationalise syllabus up to 30% by retaining the core concepts".

Nishank added, "To aid the decision, a few weeks back I also invited suggestions from all educationists on the reduction of the syllabus for students and I am glad to share that we received more than 1.5K suggestions. Thank you, everyone, for the overwhelming response".

However, the CBSE has directed all its schools and teachers to ensure that the topics that have been reduced are also explained to the students to the extent required to connect different topics.

Meanwhile, the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) has also announced a reduction of up to 25 per cent in syllabus for classes 10 and 12 board exams.

Universities and schools across the country have been closed since March 16 when the central government announced a countrywide classroom shutdown due to coronavirus pandemic. This has led to cancellation of board examinations, postponement of JEE, NEET exam, and other important entrance examinations.

Also read: CBSE reduces syllabus 30% for classes 9th to 12th, core concepts retained

Also read: CBSE Results 2020 to come out on July 15: How Class 10, Class 12 students can get mark sheets, pass certificates online