National

NCERT on damage control mode

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MAY 30. With egg on its face following the walkout by 16 State Education Ministers from its annual general meeting (AGM) on Sunday, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) today sought to set the record straight by providing "proof of intensive consultations in the preparation of the new curriculum".

Though NCERT cited a list of seminars/workshops organised across the country to discuss the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE), it failed to address the basic issue raised by the 16 Ministers. The Ministers staged a walk out to register their protest against the efforts of the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the NCERT to mislead the nation, Parliament and the Supreme Court by "asserting that the NCFSE was discussed and approved by the 37th AGM held on December 13, 2000".

The only reference to this meeting in the press release issued by NCERT today makes no mention of the NCFSE being "discussed" and "approved" by the 37th AGM as stated by it and the Ministry in their separate affidavits in the Supreme Court in a public interest litigation against the curriculum. The release stated that a number of Education Ministers chaired/participated "at the State-level meetings/seminars to evolve strategies for implementing the NCFSE, according to the decisions taken at the 37th AGM". But the minutes of this meeting — which had to be approved at the AGM on May 26 — make no mention of any such decision with the NCFSE being only an "information item".

The NCERT termed it "unfortunate" that such "large-scale consultations also involving Chief Ministers and Education Ministers in States are being ignored now".

Reacting to the media coverage of the AGM, the NCERT Director, J. S. Rajput, claimed that all such allegations were "misleading and untenable".

He said: "On the one hand, we still cling to a curriculum framework prepared in 1988 to guide our students, and on the other, we see an unhealthy campaign to malign our honest professional attempt at modernising it.

The sufferers are the innocent children of India and their parents, who are already weary of this game.

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