Worryingly, NCF 2023 lays out an extremely detailed plan, through a micromanaged design for the entire spectrum of school stages – with details of the subject areas, the interdisciplinary areas and the cross-cutting themes it proposes. Spelling out a syllabus outline with sample lesson plans, it delineates learning standards, curricular goals and expected outcomes. Even time allocations for a school are indicated, “an assembly for 25 minutes with 05 minutes to reach the classroom”. This is not all; it declares that nine more volumes will follow, with greater details on specific matters, “to enable the implementation of the NCF, and its use by practitioners, from curriculum and textbook developers, to teachers and assessors”. These forthcoming volumes will be on each of the Curricular Areas – namely, Arts and Music, Languages, Math, Science, Social Science and Humanities, Sports, and Vocational Education, and a volume on School Culture and Processes.
This overly elaborate centralised curriculum design is precisely what NCF 2005 had warned against, of an instrument for imposing uniformity, contrary to the concurrent nature of education in the federal structure, and the role of states in ensuring cultural diversity and equity.
Policies and frameworks may present promises on paper, but the demeaning quality of education and the ‘paper’ certificates doled out to the precariat, even in well-resourced urban environments, are of deep concern. How far are these new course structures mandated to address the ‘choices’ and aspirations of all our students, especially the disadvantaged thrown out early, sacrificed to the glossy facade of ‘excellence’? Worryingly, our education system is on a precarious roll, brazenly abandoning concerns of quality and equity, embracing commercial ‘content creators’, with courses that increasingly tend to align with the precarity of the gig economy.
by Anita Rampal
19/04/2023