Sudha Murty, Shankar Mahadevan among panel members to develop new NCERT textbooks

Bengaluru: Infosys Foundation Chairman Sudha Murty, renowned musician Shankar Mahadevan, economist Sanjeev Sanyal, and 16 others have been selected as members of a newly established committee by the NCERT. The committee's purpose is to revise textbooks in accordance with the updated curriculum.

The committee, titled the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC), comprises 19 members. Chaired by MC Pant, the chancellor of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), the NSTC is tasked with the development of textbooks for classes 3 to 12.

It is entrusted with the responsibility of crafting textbooks and other teaching-learning materials, which will subsequently be published and utilised by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), as stipulated by its terms of reference, a senior official explained.

"The NSTC will be assisted by Curricular Area Groups (CAGs) in the development of the teaching-learning material for each curricular area. These groups will include appropriate experts for the said subject, and will be formed by the chairperson and the co-Chairperson of NSTC, with the assistance of NCERT," the official further elaborated to PTI.

The committee's primary objective is to align the curriculum with the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE), devised by a steering committee led by K Kasturirangan, as part of the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

While the final version of the NCF-SE has already been submitted to the Union Ministry of Education, its public release is still pending. The framework's draft was unveiled in April.

The committee operates under the co-chairmanship of Manjul Bhargav, a professor of mathematics at Princeton University. Other members include esteemed mathematician Sujatha Ramdorai, badminton player U Vimal Kumar, chairperson of the Centre for Policy Studies MD Srinivas, and chairperson of Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti Chamu Krishna Shastry.

The deletion of various topics and portions from NCERT textbooks in May ignited controversy, with opposition parties accusing the BJP-led Centre of attempting to "whitewash with vengeance."

Central to the controversy was the omission of some controversial content, which wasn't openly acknowledged, despite the changes being notified. This led to allegations of a surreptitious attempt to remove these portions. Though the NCERT acknowledged that the omissions might have occurred unintentionally, they declined to reverse these deletions, asserting that they were made based on expert recommendations.