Kerala schools likely to teach deleted parts of NCERT history, social science textbooks: SCERT

NEW DELHI: The Kerala State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) will direct schools to teach the deleted portions of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus for Classes 11 and 12.

Officials said that the SCERT had formed a committee to look into NCERT’s rationalised syllabus which has then decided to teach these dropped portions to children.

“The final decision has not been taken yet but the discussions are ongoing. We are specifically looking at the deleted portions in history, political science, economics and sociology,” said a senior SCERT official who did not wish to be named.

NCERT syllabus, books in Kerala

The SCERT, which is in charge of prescribing textbooks for government schools in Kerala, relies on NCERT books for Classes 11 and 12 since all the major entrance examinations including Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains, National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and Common University Entrance Test (CUET) rely on the NCERT syllabus.

For the lower classes, that is till Class 9, the SCERT has designed its own curriculum with more local context.

In June 2022, NCERT had undertaken the process of rationalising textbooks to reduce the content load of students in Classes 6 to 12. The textbooks have become available for this academic year.

However, the rationalisation process became controversial as important portions were deleted from science, history and political science textbooks. The deletions include entire chapters on Darwin’s theory, Mughal emperors, the varna system, and the practice and abolition of untouchability.