New curriculum for scholarship exams

New curriculum for scholarship exams 

MAJOR CHANGES HAVE BEEN PROPOSED IN THE SYLLABUS THREE PAPERS — NUMERICAL AND MATHEMATICS, LANGUAGE SKILLS AND INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT

MUMBAI: The state school education department has set up an 11-member expert panel to redesign the curriculum for the middle school and high school scholarship examination, which will be held for Classes 5 and 8 for the first time from the next academic year, 2016-17.

The panel will frame the curriculum on the basis of feedback from parents and students.

Till last year, the scholarship exams were conducted for students of Classes 4 and 7 to check the learning levels of students in elementary education.

However, the exams have been moved to Classes 5 and 8 as elementary education has been extended till Class 8 under the Right to Education Act, 2009.

Besides education officials from the state board and other education departments, retired school principals and teachers from Mumbai and Pune have also been appointed to the panel, according to a government resolution issued recently by the department.

“There was an urgent need to change the curriculum of the scholarship exam,” said Vinod Tawde, school education minister. “The curriculum was last changed eight to 10 years ago.”

In September, the education department had conducted an online survey seeking the opinion of parents and students on the changes to the scholarship exams. The panel will have to design the syllabus after taking these views into account, stated the resolution.

Major changes have been proposed in the syllabus of the three papers — numerical and mathematics, language skills and the intelligence quotient (IQ) of the exam.

According to education officials, the panel will look at whether language paper should continue as first language and English or should be based only on the first language. At present, it is divided as 70 marks for first language and 30 for English ( second language in case of regional medium students)

Another proposed change is adding environmental studies or social studies to the maths paper.

Also, whether similar additions should be made to the intelligence quotient( IQ) paper is another question in the survey form.

So far, the maths paper did not include any other subject, while the IQ paper was divided into science, history and geography.

Source | Hindustan Times | 17 November 2015

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Pralhad Jadhav

Khaitan & Co