It is with a great sense of pride and satisfaction that I submit this National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE), on behalf of the National Steering Committee for National Curriculum Frameworks to Dharmendra Pradhan, Hon'ble Minister of Education, Government of India.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is a transformative initiative to usher India to prepare itself to meet the challenging demands of a twenty first century knowledge society. The NCF-SE is one of the key components of NEP 2020, that enables and energises this transformation, informed by its aims, principles and approach. Its objective is to realise the highest quality education for all our children, consistent with realising an equitable, inclusive, and plural society as envisaged by our Constitution.
This is the first ever integrated Curriculum Framework for children between ages 3-18 in India. It is a direct outcome of the 5+3+3+4 'curricular and pedagogical structure that NEP 2020 has come out with for School Education. To ensure appropriate focus and fillip to the Foundational Stage (ages 3-8), the detailed National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCF-FS) was released on 20 October 2022, by the Hon'ble Minister of Education, which is integrated within the NCF-SE. The National Curriculum Frameworks for Teacher Education, and for Adult Education, will follow shortly.
To ensure that this NCF is responsive to the needs and aspirations of our people and the nation, and is also informed by the very best experience and knowledge we have conducted widespread consultations across the country. This process has benefited from the engagement of over 13 lakh interested citizens, including students and parents, and over 1.5 lakh teachers and educationists from across the country, over 1550 district level consultations from 32 states and Union Territories, and 35 groups of institutions. These consultations are in addition to over 600 papers on 25 specifically relevant themes written by groups constituted by the states and UTs, which all together had over 4000 experts, and 25 papers on these themes developed by expert groups with over 175 members, constituted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training The pre-draft of the NCF-SE was placed for public comment on 6 April 2023, and over 100 institutions and educators gave more than 1500 detailed comments.
While the NCF-SE is informed by this collective knowledge and wisdom, the real challenge has been to analyse these inputs and develop a cogent, pragmatic, and effective synthesis that will enable changes in practices on the ground. This, in turn, has called for the NCF-SE to be presented in a language, structure, and with a variety of illustrations, such that practitioners, including most importantly Curriculum and Syllabus Developers, Teaching-Learning-Material Developers, and Teachers, should be able to relate it to their current realities. I emphasise this aspect of the work of this Committee, primarily, to highlight the several challenges arising from the needs of developing innovative methods and approaches.
We have been able to deal satisfactorily with the extraordinarily challenging task of developing this NCF-SE, because of the vibrant teamwork and dedication of my colleagues in this endeavour.
The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) called for a complete transformation of India's schooling system to make it of the highest quality for all students equitably, and to serve the needs and aspirations of the country and its people, today and for the future. The purpose of this National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE, in short NCF) is to help in bringing about such changes by effecting corresponding positive transformations in India's school curricula.
In this NCF, curriculum' refers to the overall goals, plans, arrangements, and practices that shape the experiences of students in schools. Thus 'curriculum' does not just refer to the subject content of textbooks and other Teaching-Learning Materials (TLMs) and their pedagogy, but also includes aspects, such as, school environment and culture. It is indeed only through such holistic and integrated changes across all these key aspects of the curriculum that we will be able to positively transform the overall learning experiences of our students.
Because it is the teacher, who must be the torchbearer for these changes, this NCF aims to see and present matters from the perspective of a teacher's reality. For that reason, this NCF contains the kinds of details, suggestions, and illustrations that would clarify its approach and principles at the level of practice of a teacher and the school. The teachers and schools are not bound by these illustrations, but the level of detail provided would hopefully make this NCF more graspable and usable
This approach of detailing should also make this NCF more useful and readable not just to teachers, but to all the practitioners of education including school leaders and academic and administrative functionaries, such as, cluster and block resource persons, BEOs, teacher educators, examination boards, and curriculum or syllabus or textbook development teams, as well as to those who have the greatest stake in education, namely, parents, community members, and of course, the students themselves.
This NCF aims to provide each such interested reader a reasonable understanding of what education should be like in the vision of this NCF, and why, and what role they could play.
Vision of the National Curriculum Framework
The NEP 2020 called for the development of a new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and new State Curriculum Frameworks (SCFs) as the bases for transforming school education in the country. This is in consonance with the empowerment of states in our federal structure with education as a concurrent subject. This NCF would aim to help bring consonance and harmony across the curricula in the country.
In this spirit, it is of the utmost importance for all our children of today and of tomorrow, and for the future of India to develop an educationally robust and aspirational, yet practically implementable, NCF as well as SCFs, that will ensure that all students no matter their circumstances of birth or background, have the best possible education, with complete support from the system.
At the level of the individual, the goal of the new curricula must be to foster a school education system that builds character and enables learners to be well-rounded, healthy, ethical, creative, rational, compassionate and caring individuals, while also preparing them well for higher education as well as for gainful, fulfilling employment.
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