Schools following the State syllabus want students in primary classes to follow the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) curriculum. Private school managements on Tuesday said this move would bring uniformity to the education system and ensure that their students were on par with peers in other parts of the country.
“We need NCERT syllabus right from class 1 and not any sub-standard content,” said D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary of Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka at a press conference.
The association has raised the issue with the Karnataka Textbooks Society. “There is a need to introduce it for classes 1 to 4 especially for mathematics and environmental science subjects. From the coming academic year, we will not place orders for textbooks unless the department adopts the NCERT syllabus,” he added.
An earlier analysis of the State syllabus textbooks by NCERT had revealed that there were concerns on quality of some of the material. For instance, the report found that for classes 1 to 5, the maths textbooks do not provide opportunity for young learners to construct their own knowledge. It found that the focus was on terminologies and making students write numerals over and over. It had also pointed out that the English first language textbooks were of the same standard as second language textbooks, and needed improvement.