The NCF will raise the standards of school education in Delhi

New Delhi: The Ministry of Education (MoE) released the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF) intended to guide school education. Since education is important not only for its immediate participants but also for the well-being of society as a whole, it is crucial to grasp what the NCF is all about. In the interest of full transparency, I am a member of the group formed by the ministry to develop it.

Curriculum refers to the complete educational experience of students in schools—the learning goals, syllabus, pedagogical procedures, teaching-learning materials, classroom activities, school culture, and more. This broad concept of curriculum is preferable to a firm definition because all of these factors influence children's learning. The confined definition of curriculum that just includes the syllabus, content, pedagogy, and assessment is less accurate than this comprehensive description.

The NCF is not a curriculum; it is a framework for creating curricula. It serves as a framework for the construction of curricula by describing the guiding principles, objectives, structures, and components that will then direct the production of the syllabus, teaching-learning materials, textbooks, and assessments (examinations). All of these will need to be produced by the proper state-level organizations, such as boards or other authorities in charge of education. The NCF will direct pedagogy as well as practices that shape school culture and other student experiences that educational institutions will need to foster, modify, and improve.

While acknowledging that school education is the power of states, such a shared national framework promotes harmony and coherence in school education among Indian states. Thus, the NCF is a crucial instrument for maintaining the integrity of our nation's federal system. States set their own goals and curricula for their respective school systems, but it gives shared principles and objectives derived from our democratic vision, educational research, and experience.

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The NCF could have maintained its strategy and guiding ideas at a high level of abstraction. However, years of experience imply that to empower educators, specificity is essential. Teachers, school administrators, curriculum designers, textbook writers, and other professionals fall under the category of "practitioners." The NCF's specifics are meant to influence real-world practices. However, none of its details are prescriptive; rather, they are merely explicative.

The NCF may, for example, simply state that a school's cultural practices must support equality and plurality. Instead, the NCF declares this idea but then goes on to define in detail the actions that promote equality and plurality. The specific actions put the principles into practice and give them depth. These procedures are merely ideas; schools are free to select and create their own procedures based on these guidelines.

In essence, with little assistance from "education experts," a teacher or anybody else creating the syllabus should be able to infer implications for this function from the NCF. This seems to be a prerequisite for all documents of this type. This has, surprisingly, not always been the case.

The NCF is made to be implemented with the resources that schools already have to be effective in bringing about the needed changes in practices on the ground. This is not to suggest that the NCF is not devoted to making sure that schools receive the resources they require. However, it also acknowledges that not all of the resources can be made immediately accessible for implementation. If we wait until we have all that schools need, implementation will continue to be put off under the excuse that "we will do it when we have the resources."

The NCF's strategy is to make sure it can be implemented under the current conditions while outlining a course for the future as resources increase. For instance, the NCF places equal value on mathematics and the arts, including music. However, the first reply would be "We need art teachers in all schools before we can hold art classes." However, it may take up to 15 years to complete.

The NCF takes three actions to address this concrete reality. First, it lays out requirements for learning the arts that must be met even in the absence of a dedicated subject teacher. Second, it allocates "timetable space" for the arts in line with their significance. Third, it offers a realistic method for preparing current instructors (for example, a language or mathematics) to teach the arts in a way that satisfies educational standards, using other readily available local resources.

Since the NCF was published last week, its recommendations for board exams have captured the media headlines, reflecting our culture's preoccupation with testing. This is precisely one of the traits that the NCF seeks to change. However, the text goes deeply into all aspects of academic instruction. We shall examine how the NCF addresses these and several other distinct and crucial facets of school education throughout the course of the coming columns, as well as how these might contribute to its improvement.

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