The Ministry of Human Resource Development will reduce the syllabus of NCERT textbooks in the coming two to three years. This was disclosed by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Prakash Javadekar at a media briefing in New Delhi today. Giving more details, Mr. Javadekar said that the idea to have quality education in the country emerged predominantly from the six workshops held by the Ministry as well as high level meetings with state education officials. A Large number of NGOs, education experts, state government officers, headmasters and many teachers took part in these meeting, he said.

Shri Javadekar said that it is increasingly being felt that “Plenty of information is not education and students are not just a data bank”. He said that the main aim of education is to bring out a good human being. It is the need of the hour to inculcate value education, life skills, experiential learning and physical fitness in our daily life. He added that the idea to reduce the burden is to make students learn the basic principles of various subjects, teach them how to interpret and analyze for overall personality development.

To achieve this end, the HRD Ministry has asked the NCERT to evaluate the present curriculum and decide what can be done away with and what can be retained, Shri Javadekar explained.  He further informed that the Ministry will put out this week on its website the request for suggestions from teachers, parents, educational experts, students and all concerned stakeholders in the field of education on reducing the syllabus of NCERT.  The Minister assured that after two months he will review the suggestions and take definite measures to reduce the syllabus.

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