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In what could prove to be a welcome intervention for offloading excess baggage from the “heavily loaded” CBSE syllabus, Delhi’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government has decided to prune the classes VI-VIII syllabus of government schools by 25 percent. This will be followed up by a 20 percent reduction in syllabus of classes IX-X. While the official reason advanced is freeing students for co-curricular and extra-curricular activities, the real reason is well-documented poor learning outcomes of children, particularly in government primary-secondaries.
The syllabus reduction announcement was made on Teachers’ Day (September 5) by Manish Sisodia, education minister of the Aam Aadmi (‘common man’) Party government which was voted to power in the Delhi state legislative assembly in February with a stunning majority of 67 in the 70 member house. Sisodia is also the deputy chief minister of Delhi state.
In a circular dated September 10, the AAP government notified the proposed syllabus changes to all government school heads for feedback from subject and other teachers. “It is proposed to reduce the pressure of heavy loaded syllabi of various subjects and provide students with more quality time for vocational skills, arts like theatre, dance, sports etc. Accordingly, reduction in the existing syllabi of classes VI-X English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Punjabi, maths, science and social science has been worked out,” says the state government’s notification.
Unsurprisingly, this revolutionary (in the moribund Indian context) initiative of the AAP government was condemned by several academics including Yogendra Yadav, an academic expelled from AAP in April and former advisor of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which designs the CBSE syllabus, mandatory for all government schools in Delhi. Yadav says the deletions systematically prune textbooks of everything progressive, “both in a pedagogical and political sense”. “Whenever the texts go beyond the old formal institutional descriptions of laws and institutions, they face an axe. In sum the proposal has a problem with the National Curriculum Framework. It sets the stage for what the BJP may be preparing to do with these textbooks,” posted Yadav on facebook.
A reportedly 100-strong team of educators including retired principals, teachers and consultants, which has been advising the AAP government to design 50 model government schools it promised in its manifesto, is believed to be also recasting the CBSE syllabus for government schools. “When a student doesn’t have basic language and maths skills, how can she comprehend complex knowledge concepts? That’s the rationale for reducing the syllabus. If we lessen children’s academic burden without compromising essentials, the outcome will be beneficial,” says a former deputy director of the directorate of education and member of the model schools design team.
The feedback exercise and option to prune the syllabus is also open to private schools, but it’s unlikely that any of them will exercise this option for fear of a sharp fall in average scores in the mandatory class XII school-leaving exam. “I have been teaching NCERT-designed CBSE textbooks for years and don’t see a need to reduce the syllabus. Children in this information age need to take on more. The CBSE syllabus needs more by way of activity-based learning and not cuts in it,” comments Sudha Singh, principal of Ryan International School, Greater Noida.
Notwithstanding the criticism and concerns, there’s no denying that the AAP government’s syllabus pruning initiative, which could free up children to focus on learning the basics, is a historic intervention in school education in India. While private schools are expectedly lukewarm, reduced curriculums will surely enable first generation learners, who have minimal parental support at home, to focus on core language, maths and science subjects. The new pruned syllabuses may hurt their chances of winning prizes, but it’s certain to improve their fundamentals.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Excessive subsidisation blues
Decades of over-subsidisation of students, over-payment of indolent faculty (entry level salaries start at Rs.60,000 per month), inadequate capital expenditure and outdated syllabuses and curricula have begun to take their toll on Delhi University and its 75 affiliated colleges routinely ranked among the country’s most respected institutions in magazine and newspaper surveys. Of late, the varsity has been witness to a number of protests by dissatisfied students demanding systemic overhaul. 
For over a month (August 22-September 26), 400 students of the College of Arts (estb.1942) boycotted classes and staged relay hunger strikes to protest lack of adequate infrastructure. “We are denied even the most basic facilities required by an arts college. Among them: a redundant curriculum last updated in 2009, incompetent teachers unaware of latest trends and developments, lack of exposure to industry, guest lectures, and poor infrastructure. Basically for the past several years, the college has been working like a defunct government office,” says Nitish Arora, a third year applied arts student.
Apart from show-piece colleges such as Lady Sri Ram, St. Stephen’s, Delhi School of Economics and Miranda House, most of DU’s affiliated colleges have experienced similar protests. Dissatisfied with the quality of sports equipment and shortage of teachers, students of the department of physical education of the DU-affiliated Aditi Mahavidyalaya College (AMC, estb.1994) also had to resort to boycotting classes for three days ending September 28 after the college management promised “to advertise for the post of a coach”. “The majority of DU colleges don’t have enabling teaching-learning environments, with teachers having little or almost no freedom to intervene in academic matters like curriculum innovations, new pedagogies etc. This explains why the best teachers have left Delhi University for private varsities. Budgetary allocations from the Centre are clearly inadequate. Therefore, it’s a good idea to raise tuition fees while offering soft loans to students who actually need them,” says Prof. Anita Ghosh, head of AMC’s department of physical education and joint secretary of the Delhi University Teachers’ Association.
Quite clearly, the policy of universal subsidisation of college students under which a Birla scion pays the same highly subsidised tuition fee as the child of a daily wage labourer, needs review. In India’s higher education institutions, students contribute barely 4-5 percent of the actual cost of education as against 20-30 percent in government colleges/universities in the US, UK and Commonwealth countries. A switch-over to a full-fees regime with students from financially underprivileged households facilitated with long-term student loans and subsidies is urgently required to improve the cash flow of the country’s rundown and ill-equipped institutions of higher education.
Crumbling buildings, over-crowded classrooms, rundown labs, libraries and lack of resources for research, experimentation and innovation are sapping student morale. Little wonder that Delhi University with its 75 affiliated colleges, which receive over 300,000 admission applications for 54,000 seats annually, and routinely ranked among the country’s top three varsities, fails to make it into the world’s top 200 universities league tables of the London-based QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) and Times Higher Education.
It’s all very well — and indeed justifiable — to complain about poor infrastructure, facilities and equipment which characterise India’s 47,000 colleges and 800 universities. But it’s high time the Central and state governments and the militant students community acknowledged that excessive and universal subsidisation of tuition fees is bleeding India’s higher education institutions to slow death.
Swati Roy (Delhi)