New syllabus: A year on, Parents, teachers satisfied with revision

With the state government’s implementation of the revised school curriculum almost completing its first year, several stake holders, including students, parent community and teachers claim that while they are satisfied with the revision after several issues were addressed.

After more than 10 years, the Tamil Nadu government have launched new syllabi for Classes 1, 6, 9 and 11 with School Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan claiming that the new curriculum would be on par with CBSE syllabus and that with it students would also be able to crack national level exams including NEET and JEE.

As the academic year draws to a close, parents and academicians admit that several students were finding it difficult to cope with the new syllabus as portions were huge when compared to the old syllabus. Even teachers are still confused whether the portions in the fresh curriculum could be covered before the final examinations.

“The members of the various parent teacher associations in the state have sent a lot of suggestions to the government when the draft syllabus was released. Most of our ideas were incorporated,” said K Vasudevan, the deputy secretary of the parent-teacher association of Pallavaram said.

He added that most of the portions, especially for classes 6, 9 and 11 are based on CBSE syllabus, which would help the students in future. “The results will, however, be known only when the students, who followed the new syllabus, face competitive exams in future,”said Vasudevan.

K Bhuvaneshwari, CBSE school teacher from Chrompet, said, “When I went through the new syllabus, most of the portions are identical to CBSE books”. According to her, most of the portion from Physics and Chemistry, especially for Class 11, most of the portions were explained with comprehensive diagrams. But, she said state board teachers should play a pivotal role to teach all the portions within the time frame.

Meanwhile, K Savithiri, a Science teacher at Anakaputhur government higher secondary school, said that since the distribution of text books with the new curriculum was late and covering the entire portion is a challenge this year. “We keep special classes especially for Class 11 students regular so that we can teach them all the portions before the board exams,” she said.

The students, however, said that the transition to the new curriculum has been difficult. K Sankara Narayanan, a Class XI student of a matriculation school in Numgambakkam, admitted that some of the portions in the news syllabus are difficult. “But, I am certain that this will help me prepare for the Class 12 syllabus which will be refreshed in the next academic year,” he said.

Despite involvement of several experts in preparing the new curriculum last year, factual errors had surfaced in the textbooks of Classes 9 and 11. Most of the errors in the books were related to the dates and some of the paragraphs were incomplete. And the books were delivered late too with some schools receiving it as late as in August 2018.

For the first time, hundreds of artistes were involved in creating comprehensive pictures in the textbooks to explain details of the chapters.

Dr G Arivoli, the director of Tamil Nadu State Council of Education Research and Training in Chennai, who is the member-secretary, said the process of changing syllabus was a challenging one. “This year, we made sure that the textbooks are error free. And, we hope to deliver all the books before the schools reopen for the new session,” Arivoli said.

The government has taken steps to strengthen the curriculum development committee by appointing more experts. Accordingly, three former vice chancellors of state-owned universities were appointed besides including professors, educationists and artists. In addition to that, two sub-committees were also constituted by appointing technical experts including an ISRO scientist and former director of CBSC besides an IAS officer.

Dr E Balagurusamy, a former Vice Chancellor of Anna University, who is a part of the committee, said this time co-ordination and team work has been good and all the works would be completed in couple of months. He added that best practising teachers from Tamil Nadu and across the country has been invited to contribute to designing the new curriculum, syllabus and developing the textbooks.