Thiruvananthapuram: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) had recently omitted certain topics from its higher secondary school textbooks, sparking a controversy. The Kerala’s State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) has now prepared eight supplementary textbooks including these lessons.
“An expert committee worked on these text booklets on Sociology, History, Economics and Politics for Plus One and Plus Two classes (Classes 11 and 12). The booklets will be released during this month itself,” said Dr R K Jayaprakash, SCERT Director.
“In the exams, there will be questions from these supplementary booklets also,” the Director added.
The SCERT authorities are planning to print only a limited number of hard copies of the booklets and would be distributing soft copies to everyone. The booklets have only a few pages and prints of the soft copies could be taken easily by students and teachers, said an official.
The NCERT had omitted topics such as Gujarat riots, Gandhiji’s opposition to the demand for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, the Emergency, Mughal history, lessons on Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and references to Nathuram Godse from its textbooks.
The NCERT had omitted references to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a freedom fighter and India's first education minister, from the new political science textbook for Class 11. Similar were made in text books from 6th to 12th grades as part of 'syllabus rationalisation'.
Earlier, Education Minister V Sivankutty had stated that Kerala will not accept the central decision to exclude subjects like RSS ban, caste system and social movements from the curriculum.