A new committee, led by National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) Chancellor MC Pant, Infosys Foundation Chairman Sudha Murthy, music maestro Shankar Mahadevan, economist Sanjeev Sanyal and 16 others, has been formed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to revise textbooks from Classes III to XII, reports PTI.
According to the report, this 19-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) will develop teaching materials for various subjects.
The committee is mandated to prepare the textbooks and other teaching learning materials, which will, in turn, be published and used by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), as per the terms of reference, a senior official said.
"The NSTC will be assisted by Curricular Area Groups (CAGs) in the development of the teaching-learning material for each curricular area. These groups will include appropriate experts for the said subject and will be formed by the chairperson and the co-Chairperson of NSTC, with the assistance of NCERT," the official said.
The NSTC will follow the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
While the final NCF-SE has already been submitted to the Union Ministry of Education, it is yet to be released in the public domain. The draft of the framework was released in April.
The committee also includes co-chair Manjul Bhargav, a professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, badminton player U Vimal Kumar, Chairperson of Centre for Policy Studies MD Srinivas and Chairperson of Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti Chamu Krishna Shastry.
The dropping of several topics and portions from NCERT textbooks in May triggered a controversy, with the opposition blaming the BJP-led Centre for "whitewashing with vengeance".
To recall, at the heart of the controversy was the fact that while the changes made as part of a rationalisation exercise were notified, some of the controversial deletions were not mentioned.
This led to allegations regarding a bid to delete these portions surreptitiously. While NCERT said the deletions were unintentional, it refused to reverse those deletions.