Karnataka’s Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Tanveer Sait said on Thursday, that revised textbooks will be introduced in 75,000 state board schools from the next academic year.
The move comes nearly a year after the state government constituted a revision committee to look into the gaps in the syllabus. It is believed that the syllabus of state board schools will be brought on par with that of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
The minister’s statement comes a day after a press release from the office of Chief Minister Siddharamaiah confirmed that revised textbooks will be introduced in 75,000 state board schools from the next academic year.
Minister Tanveer Sait has many a time reiterated that the revised textbooks can only be brought in 2018-2019. However, the revision committee headed by writer Baraguru Ramachandrappa was of the opinion that it shall be introduced sooner.
Minister Tanveer Sait told the media that the decision was taken on the CM’s insistence:
“The secondary education department was willing to introduce new textbooks from the academic year 2018-2019, but the CM insisted that it be done from the next academic year itself.”
The textbook revision committee has been directed to submit the revised textbooks by January 15, 2017. Recently, there were reports that the government had decided to go ahead with NCERT textbooks for classes 1 to 10, instead of incorporating the revisions suggested by its committee.
The present decision has brought to fruition the efforts of the revision committee, that was formed following allegations of saffronisation in the syllabus. The committee was formed at the time of Kimmane Rathnakar's tenure.
Baraguru Ramachandrappa told The News Minute that the committee was glad that the government has taken its suggestions into consideration.
"The committee does not see this as a victory and does not want to claim credit for it either. We are thankful to the CM and the Education Minister who took our consultation and have now come to a conclusion on it," he said.