NCERT clarifies Class 9 Maths syllabus; says 'topics not dropped, integrated across chapters'

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has clarified that the draft syllabus for school education should not be assessed merely by counting the number of chapters in textbooks. The council said the curriculum under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023 is structured around Curricular Goals, Competencies and Learning Outcomes.

NCERT said the syllabus released earlier was a draft intended to seek feedback from teachers, students, authors and educators. The draft will be finalised following feedback process and released in October by NCERT and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

According to NCERT , curricular goals define the broader aims of a subject at a particular stage, while competencies specify what learners should be able to achieve by the end of that stage. Learning Outcomes, meanwhile, provide observable milestones for teaching, learning and assessment at each grade level.

The council said textbooks are among the resources used to achieve these goals and outcomes. It added that the organisation of content into chapters is a pedagogical arrangement intended to support competency development and should not be considered an end in itself.

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No topics were removed: NCERT

Addressing concerns over grade 9 Mathematics draft syllabus in particular, NCERT said no overall topics had been removed. Instead, some topics that traditionally appeared as standalone chapters have been incorporated into other chapters.

For instance, the council said several key concepts and applications related to Lines and Angles have been included in the Grade 9 Part 2 chapters “Propositions and Their Converses” and “Quadrilaterals”. NCERT noted that Lines and Angles had already been covered through a dedicated chapter in Grade 6 Ganita Prakash.

The council also clarified the treatment of Euclidean geometry in the Grade 9 Mathematics curriculum. It said concepts related to the geometry of flat two-dimensional space, including polygons, circles, parallel lines and intersecting lines, are covered across Chapters 5, 6, 9, 12 and 13 of the Grade 9 Mathematics textbook.

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The council also explained the inclusion of algorithms in the Grade 9 Mathematics curriculum. It said the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has increased the importance of students understanding concepts such as algorithms, data structures and running-time efficiency from a mathematical perspective.

NCERT said its new textbooks across subjects, including Mathematics and Social Science, have been designed to help students achieve the suggested Curricular Goals, Competencies and Learning Outcomes through an integrated, experiential and meaningful approach aligned with NEP 2020 and NCF-SE 2023.

The council has advised schools, teachers, school boards and other stakeholders to plan classroom teaching and assessment with reference to competencies.