A national steering Committee and national focus groups have been engaged to deliberate on various issues and concerns, including the interaction with various ministries, autonomous bodies, civil society groups and even corporates and for collecting and collating inputs.
The government on Sunday announced the initiation of a public consultation for the development of a national curriculum framework (NCF). The NCF is an offshoot of the national education policy announced in 2020.
National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 on 29th July 2020, which recommends quality improvement of the system of education through the development of a National Curriculum Framework (NCF).
The process of the national curriculum framework has been started through the constitution of district consultation committees, state focus groups, and state steering committees that will, in turn, inform the national focus groups and the national steering committee.
A tech platform on the world wide web and a mobile app have also been developed. The mobile app is envisaged to be employed for a survey that will inform the other platforms for consultations – a “bottom-up approach” to reach out to stakeholders, including parents, Anganwadi workers, teachers, teacher educators and students.
The government says that the app will help collect “views and opinion about the future of school education, early childhood care and education, teacher education and adult education.”
At the national level too, the national steering committee and national focus groups have been engaged to deliberate on various issues and concerns, including the interaction with various ministries, autonomous bodies, civil society groups, corporates and also philanthropic groups for collecting and collating inputs for formulation of NCF. A mandate document for the formulation of NCF has been developed for guiding the stakeholders in the process.
Online consultation
The government says that the effort is to provide an opportunity to every stakeholder – irrespective of them being parents, teachers or students willing to participate in the transformation of the country’s education system through sharing views on common concerns related to education.
The effort also recognises the diversity in the country, providing an opportunity to every stakeholder, who may or may not be a parent or a teacher or a student and willing to participate in the transformation of the education system in India, through sharing views on common concerns related to education. “Such multiple and diverse views are likely to provide a practical road map for the smooth implementation of the vision of NEP 2020,” according to a statement of the ministry of education.
An online public consultation survey will be instrumental in collating very useful and crucial inputs for the formulation of national curriculum framework and also subsequently designing syllabus, textbooks and other instructional materials.
The government has invited teachers, headmasters and principals, school leaders, educationists, parents, students, community members, civil society groups, experts, public representatives, artists, artisans, farmers and anyone else interested in school and teacher education to participate in the online survey being conducted in 23 languages – all languages placed in the Constitution’s VIII Schedule as well as English.
