NCERT to Publish All School Textbooks

In a recent meeting attended by the CBSE secretary and NCERT director and chaired by the school education secretary Anil Swarup, a decision was taken on the textbooks to be used throughout schools in the country. Beginning from the academic year 2018, only the NCERT, or National Council of Educational Research & Training, will be the only organisation which will be allowed to publish school textbooks.

CBSE will now have its role limited to its original assignment of conducting examinations and affiliations.

As per the new ruling, books published for CBSE curriculum will also be now prepared by the NCERT. The NCERT Chief Hrushikesh Senapaty gave a presentation detailing the plan of action the council would be following in this regard.

And HRD Official revealed that the Ministry has asked of the NCERT to be prepared for the higher volume of textbooks that will be expected to be required from 2018. The NCERT confirmed that they would be prepared for the higher volume, and would also be carrying out a revision of the existing textbooks before the new school year.

The official also told the media that the Council has been instructed to work upon the presentation of the textbooks in an effort to improve the books qualitatively, and to ensure that factual errors in the text matter are corrected.

The NCERT has accordingly invited teachers across the states and Union territories of India to study the books to identify factual errors as well as suggest conceptual improvements, giving them a deadline of June 30 this year to submit their recommendations. Post this period, subject matter experts will be brought in to study the recommendations and make appropriate updates into the textbooks.

As the books were last updated in 2007, the review process is of utmost importance to update the latest information into the curriculum.

The CBSE Board reacted to this decision by circling memos to all the CBSE Board affiliated schools to appraise them of the new requirement, and to request them to raise online demand for the new textbooks to ensure that the schools had a sufficient supply of books in time for the new school year 2017 which began in April.

A demand of almost 5 million books was raised by over 2000 CBSE affiliated schools this year.

Following a recent controversy earlier this year, wherein a Physical Education textbook for Standard XII published by a private publisher was used in a school, the CBSE made a quick request to the NCERT to replace the book for its school.

The NCERT books are becoming more and more important and have been slowly implemented across the country in all states.   All states are now recommending to implement NCERT books as they are considered to be of higher standard which helps the student to learn concepts and topics which are more relevant.

 By studying the books which have been designed by NCERT as per the syllabus issued by CBSE the student can be sure that his preparation is at par with the preparations done by students in various metro cities like Delhi and Mumbai.  if the NCERT books are used by various States also then the students who are taking admission in universities like Delhi and Mumbai University are able to compete in entrance exams and I also able to perform better or at par with the students in the cities as the preparation with their done in schools is just like the preparation done by students in Delhi and Mumbai.

 the teachers have also been advised to tell the students the importance of doing questions which are given at the end of each chapter in the NCERT books and do NCERT solutions on a regular basis and get the solutions verified by the teachers or refer to NCERT solutions which have been given on various websites and download them and compare with the solutions done by themselves.  The students are also advised not to simply copy paste the NCERT solutions from various sources and websites but they should do the solutions by themselves and then compare their answers with the NCERT answers which have been given at various places.

 The student should do the questions of NCERT on a regular basis so that his preparation is good and he doesn't face too much of examination pressure during the exams.