The Tamil Nadu State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) has revamped the textbooks for the new academic year and will begin to train government teachers on the same soon. A senior SCERT official told Express that the training will start in the second week of June. 

The council has revamped the syllabus for all classes except 1,6,9 and 11 for the academic year 2019-20. The revision of syllabus for these four classes were made in the previous academic year.“In line with what we did last year, we have made the textbooks more interactive. We have included more graphical elements to engage students better. We have also worked actively on condensing the textbooks into one volume,” the official said, adding that earlier most textbooks were printed separately for each term. However, upon receiving feedback on the length of the books, SCERT decided to make it concise.

“Students have to learn an entire year’s syllabus for public exams. It makes it simpler for them to be able to read it out of one book,” the official said. The syllabus has also been tweaked to sustain a gradation through the years. “If they learn about Tamil Nadu history in class 9, they’ll learn national history the next year,” an official involved in the revamp said.

He added that the quality of the books did not come down at the cost of making it shorter. “In subjects like Maths, we’ve included alternate solutions and detailed solving strategies. We’ve introduced basic algebra in class 5. So we continue to print them as two volumes. However, we’ve introduced single volumes for subjects such as botany and zoology for class 12,” he said, adding that no textbook would be bigger than 16-forms of printing, that is, 368 pages. This step was taken to ensure that the book did not disintegrate owing to stability issues.

“At the State level, SCERT will train three key resource persons, per subject per district. These teachers will, in turn, train other teachers in the district,” the SCERT senior official explained.