CISCE announces major shift in academic curriculum, teaching process in line with NEP 2020

With an elaborate plan to align the curriculum of the board in line with the National Education Policy 2020, the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) on Tuesday held a meeting with the heads of institutions of its affiliated schools in West Bengal and North-East India at The Heritage School, Kolkata and discussed various methods to implement NEP 2020 in the board's syllabus.

The meeting witnessed the presence of Dr G Immanuel, Chairman of CISCE and Dr Joseph Emmanuel, Chief Executive and Secretary, CISCE as the Chief Guest and the Guest of Honour respectively. Over 200 principals from various affiliated schools across the region participated in the event.

Speaking at the event, Dr Joseph Emmanuel focussed on the need to move away from rote learning and shift to competency-focussed and skill-based learning in the coming days.

"The time has come when we must teach students for their life. The curriculum changes are significant to implementing NEP 2020 in the CISCE framework. Apart from the curriculum, schools also need to focus on the learnings required for a child's overall growth and excellence," said Dr Emmanuel.

"Major focus on content-oriented teaching and mindless selection of textbooks doesn't give leverage to teachers to adopt innovative teaching-learning practices in the classrooms. Encourage your teachers to follow a teaching-learning pattern that is more experiential, based on the curriculum and syllabus prescribed by the council," he added.

He also emphasised the need for teachers to have a personal connect with students from the foundational levels of education to the middle levels.

"Please make sure that every teacher knows his/her student personally. During this time, all the shortcomings in the path towards holistic development of a child need to be addressed. It is the overall development of the child that needs focus," he said.

He said that the Council is in discussions with various universities across the globe to give weightage to CISCE students so that they can skip 1-2 semesters in their undergraduate programmes.

"We teach so much to our children that they can easily skip those semesters at their undergraduate level. We are at an advanced stage of this discussion with universities in various parts of the world," he said.

He also asked the heads of the schools to take measures to stop the exodus of students from the board after the Class 10 ICSE examinations.

"The syllabus of CISCE is in line with the syllabus of the competitive examinations like JEE Main and NEET UG. Schools will have to boost the confidence of students and communicate effectively to stop the exodus of students from the board at the Higher Secondary level. Schools should also improvise methods to help students appearing in the entrance examinations," said Dr Joseph.

The Principals of the attending schools also sounded confident and eager to introduce the NEP 2020 guidelines in the curriculum.

"At the meeting, we got to understand the stand of the Council on NEP 2020 and the way forward. We understood the steps which are being undertaken by the new Chief Executive & Secretary, Dr Joseph Emmanuel to make the council for student-friendly. This is encouraging and the new policies and changes they are planning will benefit the students. The proposals made by the council today will help us implement NEP 2020 in our schools in a better manner," said Sonali Sen, Principal of DPS New Town.

P.C Daniels, Principal of St Thomas Church School, Howrah is also hopeful that by following the new guidelines of the Council, the school will be able to help students in realising their goals to a great extent.

"At the meeting, we were given the best way forward with NEP 2020. As and when the council propagates the line-up of all the events they have in store, it will ease the process for every one of us," he said.