Srinagar: Three more State Focus Groups (SFGs) held a consultative meeting to finalize the position papers prepared by the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) at the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) in Bemina here today.
The event marked an end to a series of hectic online and offline exercises wherein experts from various fields and faculties chosen by the NCERT put in their best efforts to finalise the position papers on some 25 themes/areas.
The NCF Committee has appointed chairpersons, member secretaries and members to prepare the position papers. Four NCFs have been laid out by the NEP 2020 on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), School Education (SE), Teacher Education (TE) and Adult Education (AE) have been laid out by the NEP 2020.
The groups on “Guidance and Counselling”, “Health Well-Being,Yoga,Sports & Fitness” and “Emerging Role of Community in Education” were respectively led by Prof. Showkat Ahmad Shah, Dean, School of Education & Behavioural Sciences, Dr Surjit Singh, Head, Physical Education, University of Kashmir and Dr Tasleema Jan, Head, School of Education & Behavioural Sciences.
Shagufta Nazir and Ishfaq Anjum Samoon, senior academic officers at SCERT and Peerzada Bashir Ahmad, Coordinator Nishta on Dikhsha, are the member secretaries chosen by the NCERT for the task.
All states and UTs have been asked to prepare their State Curriculum Frameworks (SCFs) passing through the process of District Level Consultations (DLC), mobile app survey and development of position papers by the State Focus Groups in 25 areas/themes identified as per the NEP, 2020.
SCERT has been nominated as a nodal agency to prepare the State Curriculum Framework (SCF) through a series of consultative meetings involving educationists, teacher educators, resource persons, representatives from Social Welfare Department, parents and neo-literates.
“In all 70 questions—40 for School Education, 10 each for ECCE, Adult Education and Teacher Education—were prepared by the NCERT,” Academic Officer, G H Reshi, Nodal Officer, SCF, informed.
NCERT had dispatched a team last month to interact with diverse stakeholders at a consultative meet on the SCF.
“The inclusion of local flavour in the curriculum would help cast aside rigidity and exclusivity,” Prof Anita Nuna, former head, Department of Curriculum Studies, NCERT, New Delhi, said. “The National Education Policy 2020 has been designed in a manner that it allows—through discussions and consultative meetings with the stakeholders—the inclusion of the local flavour, value systems, socio-economic backgrounds and the best practices of any state or UT before the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) is given a shape.”
A bottom-up procedure, she said, had been adopted for the first time to frame the national curriculum based on several novel concepts such as competency-based education, experiential learning, flexibility, creative and critical thinking.
