To choose the social science curriculum for classes 6–12, NCERT Forms a 35-Member Committee
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has created a committee of 35 members to design teaching and learning materials and curricular content on disciplines including political science, sociology, psychology, geography and history for grades 6 to 12. This happens after the 19-member NSTC was informed in July that the curriculum, textbooks, and instructional materials for these courses needed to be finalized. Michel Danino, a visiting professor at IIT Gandhinagar, will head the newly formed Curricular Area Group (CAG) for Social Science.
A minimum of 11 Curricular Area Groups covering a range of courses are required by the NSTC. For the social sciences, Indian knowledge systems (IKS), and innovative pedagogy and educational resources, these CAGs have already been established. The NCERT committee is now finalizing the content of the textbooks, which are derived from the NCF. In order to align with NEP 2020, NCERT is also updating the curriculum. November 25, 2023 is the deadline for NSTC and NCERT to receive the curriculum.
The NCERT announcement said that in order to assure continuity with Grades 3-5, interdisciplinarity across subjects, and the inclusion of cross-cutting themes in Social Science, this Group would also interact with the Preparatory Stage CAG and with other CAGs as required.
Additionally, it said, “The CAGs—Social Science and Economics—will assure this integration by exchanging and debating drafts of material generated with each other, given the need for both vertical and horizontal connections and integration among disciplines in the social sciences. The deadline for NSTC and NCERT submission of Teacher Handbooks is February 25, 2024.
Among the 35-panel members are notable individuals, such as Sanjeev Sanyal (a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India) Banabina Brahma (Associate Professor at Kokrajhar Government College, Assam), MD Srinivas (Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies in Chennai), Mazhar Asif (Centre of Persian and Central Asian Studies at JNU), Heeraman Tiwari (Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, JNU), Javaid Iqbal Bhat (Assistant Professor at the University of Kashmir), and Commodore Dr. Odakkal Johnson (Retd.) (Former Director of Maritime History Society), among several others.
