Education minister on reopening of school/colleges in Gujarat, cut in curriculum and more

Gandhinagar: Gujarat government has decided to rationalize the syllabus for students for the academic year 2020-21.

Education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama said, ‘the government has given the task to GCERT (Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training) to obtain opinions of experts in this regard. He said Secondary Education Board has formed a committee to decide 20 per cent, 30 per cent, how much syllabus can be cut.’

He said, ‘I have given clear instruction that syllabus that can be useful for successive academic year must not be cut. Suppose there’s a portion of syllabus in class-9 which is useful for class-10 studies, then that portion has to be there and it can’t be compromised.’

The minister further said that he has been holding two-hour long webinars with educationist from across the State in recent weeks.

‘Yesterday only, I had two and half hours long webinar with renown educationists. The experts opined that syllabus has to be cut. They also said that there should be no hurry to reopen the schools and colleges. The experts also suggested that reopening of educational institutes should be in phased manner. In first phase, the colleges can reopen, in the next phase standard 10-11-12 classes can reopen, in the third phase class-8 and 9 should reopen. And in the last phase class 1 to 7 should be reopened.Utmost caution should be there for school children,’ Chudasama said.

He said the Education department will be in no hurry for reopening as health and well being of children need to be first priority. The Education department will consult Health department before taking any decision on reopening. Health checkup of children is also planned post reopening, whenever that happens, he said.

It’s worth mentioning that Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Union cabinet minister for Human Resource Development had recently took a decision to revise the curriculum and reduce course load for the CBSE students of class 9th to 12th.

DeshGujarat