Chennai: The much awaited draft new syllabus and curriculum will be released on Monday after getting clearance from the high level committee, which is scheduled to meet early Monday. The Tamil Nadu State Board Higher Secondary syllabus is being revised after a gap of 12 years and for other classes it is being upgraded after seven years.
The decade-old syllabus was cited as one of the main reasons for poor performance of state board students in national level competitive exams including NEET and JEE. The revised syllabus will have new topics such as robotics, nano-science and gender issues. Many topics were realigned according to the age of students and classes. “We will release both the curriculum and syllabus after getting approval from the high level committee on Monday,” a source told Deccan Chronicle.
The state government had held a mega conference to prepare new curriculum framework and syllabus in July. The Tamil Nadu Curriculum Framework Committee headed by Anna University former Vice-Chancellor M. Anandakrishnan held public hearings at several places including Chennai and Madurai to hear voices of various stakeholders before preparing the curriculum framework.
Revised syllabus will have no major change
Meanwhile, officials did a gap analysis between state board and other boards including CBSE. They concluded that there was no major difference in syllabus between the state board and CBSE. The main difference, according to their study, lay in the evaluation pattern and textbooks. So, the revised syllabus will not have any major changes except for some new topics. It will also have more than 90 per cent of old topics, which are fundamental ideas.
But, they proposed major changes in new textbooks and evaluation pattern with more emphasis on application oriented questions to prepare the state board students for competitive exams. “The curriculum committee has already approved the draft syllabus for classes 1 to 12. The draft new syllabus will be released for general public to get the feedback”, the source said. “After getting feedback from experts, teachers and others, the finalised syllabus will be released,” he added.
Tamil Nadu government has announced an elaborate plan to revise the syllabus for all classes in three academic years starting from 2018-19. The revised syllabus for classes 1, 6, 9 and 11 will be introduced in 2018-19. The curriculum framework is expected to spell out the educational goals and suggestions to the problems faced by school education.
