“Great honour”, says Kasturirangan on heading school curriculum panel

PTI, Sep 22, 2021, 1:05 PM IST

Bengaluru: K Kasturirangan on Wednesday said he is greatly honoured to head the panel to develop new curriculum for schools and looking forward to the task.

The Union Education Ministry on Tuesday formed a 12-member steering committee, headed by the former Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, to develop new curriculums for school, early childhood, teacher and adult education.

“I am greatly honoured by what the Government has asked me to do”, Kasturirangan, who had also chaired the National Education Policy-2020 (NEP-2020) drafting committee, told PTI.

The panel has been tasked with developing four national curriculum frameworks (NCFs).

The members of the panel include Chancellor of National Institute of Education Planning and Administration, Mahesh Chandra Pant; Chairman of National Book Trust, Govind Prasad Sharma; Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia Najma Akhtar; Vice Chancellor of Central Tribal University of Andhra Pradesh T V Kattimani; Chairperson of IIM Jammu Milind Kamble and guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar, Michel Danino.

Jagbir Singh, Chancellor of Central University of Punjab, Bathinda; Manjul Bhargava, American mathematician of Indian origin; M K Sridhar, trainer and social activist; Dhir Jhingran, founder director of Language and Learning Foundation (LLF); and Shankar Maruwada, co-founder and CEO at EkStep Foundation, are also on the panel.

“Members are all very erudite and well-versed with the aspects of education, training and creation of knowledge bases”, Kasturirangan said.

“So, working with them will be a great privilege”, he added. “I very much look forward to it”.

According to the terms of reference of the committee, it will develop four NCFs for school education, early childhood care and education, teacher education and adult education, keeping in focus all the recommendations of NEP-2020 related to these four areas for proposing curriculum reforms.

The NCFs serve as a guideline for syllabus, textbook and teaching practices for schools in India.