As part of its rationalisation exercise, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) removed chapters about the Non-Aligned Movement, the Cold War era, the rise of Islamic empires in Afro-Asian territories, the chronicles of Mughal courts and the industrial revolution, two poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz from the 2022-23 syllabus of class 10, 11 and 12.
Every year the CBSE takes a rationalisation exercise about the syllabus to be prescribed to students for reading and evaluation. The scheme for the session 2022-23 was announced last week.
Explaining its rationalisation exercise, a senior official of the CBSE said, “CBSE annually provides curriculum for classes 9 to 12 containing academic content, syllabus for examinations with learning outcomes, pedagogical practices and assessment guidelines. Considering the feedback of stakeholders and other prevailing conditions, the board is in favour of conducting the annual scheme of assessment at the end of the academic session 2022-23 and the curriculum has been designed accordingly.”
The CBSE Class 11 history syllabus doesn’t include the chapter ‘Central Islamic Lands’, which talks about the rise of Islamic empires in Afro-Asian territories and its impact on the economy and society.
However, this is not the first time CBSE has dropped from the syllabus certain chapters that have been part of the curriculum for decades.
As part of its decision to rationalise the syllabus, the CBSE in 2020 had announced that chapters on federalism, citizenship, nationalism, and secularism in class 11 political science textbooks would not be considered while assessing students. A certain section had protested against the changes in 2020.
The exercise has been carried out by the NCERT too in the past. In 2012, the NCERT had agreed to drop six cartoons from the Political Science textbooks of classes 9, 10, 11 and 12 following outrage over “anti-political class” content. In 2018, the NCERT had undertaken another round of revision of political commentary, including tweaking the captions under cartoons.
It is being speculated that the syllabus shared with schools for the 2022-23 academic session also hints at the board’s decision to revert to a single-board exam in a session from the two-term examination last year.
While the two-term exam was announced as a one-time special measure taken given the Covid-19 pandemic, the board officials had last week said a final call will be taken in due course of timekeeping in mind the situation.
