Srinagar: A team from the National Council of Education and Training (NCERT), New Delhi, comprising Prof Anita Nuna and Dr R K Sharma Tuesday interacted with diverse stakeholders at a consultative meeting on State Curriculum Framework (SCF) held at the auditorium of Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) at Bemina on Wednesday (April 27).
A cross-section of educationists, teacher educators, resource persons, representatives from the Social Welfare Department, parents and neo-literates attended the event jointly convened by the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) and JKBOSE.
“The inclusion of local flavour in the curriculum would help cast aside rigidity and exclusivity,” Prof Anita Nuna, former head, Department of Curriculum Studies, NCERT, New Delhi, said. “The National Education Policy 2020 has been designed in a manner that it allows—through discussions and consultative meetings with the stakeholders—the inclusion of the local flavour, value systems, socio-economic backgrounds and the best practices of any state or UT before the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) is given a shape,” she added.
Earlier, she said, NCERT was routinely tasked with the preparation of the curriculum without such consultative meetings.
“It’s for the first time that a bottom-up procedure has been adopted to frame the national curriculum based on several novel concepts such as competency-based education, experiential learning, flexibility, creative and critical thinking etc.,” Prof Anita said, adding, “All these features have been included in the NEP 2020 so that a holistic development of a child is brought about.”
The objective of the NEP 2020, she said, is to give rise to a knowledge-based society with justice and equitability as its hallmarks so that India emerges as a global superpower.
Elaborating on the strategy, Dr R K Sharma, Assistant Professor, NCERT-RIE, Ajmer, said the SCFs would be the subsets of the NCF.
“In the initial instance, all states and UTs will prepare their State Curriculum Frameworks (SCFs) passing through the process of District Level Consultations (DLC), mobile app survey and development of position papers by the State Focus Groups in 25 areas/themes identified as per the NEP, 2020,” she said. “These draft SCFs will provide inputs to the development of NCFs,” she added.
He said four NCFs have been laid out by the NEP 2020 on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), School Education (SE), Teacher Education (TE) and Adult Education (AE).
Academic Officer, SCERT, G H Reshi and Deputy Director, JKBOSE, Dr Arif Jan, who have been appointed as nodal officers for SCF, had put in place all the event arrangements.
“In all 70 questions—40 for School Education, 10 each for ECCE, Adult Education and Teacher Education—were prepared by the NCERT,” Reshi said. “Accordingly, we distributed the questions among five groups.”
He said the responses will be formed into a single report and sent to the NCERT for their perusal.
Dr Arif Jan apprised the gathering of the mobile app survey, district-level consultations and the development of position papers.
“Around 3414 mobile app surveys, 70 district level consultations have so far been conducted in this regard,” he said, adding, “Work on the development of 25 position papers is under progress and those will soon be uploaded on NCF tech platform.”
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