Union Education Ministry directs NCERT to implement annual textbook review system

• Union education ministry instructs NCERT to implement annual textbook review system
• NCERT to ensure necessary changes are made before printing new editions for each academic session
• Rationale behind the directive includes need to incorporate emerging topics and ensure textbook relevance and accuracy

The Union education ministry has directed the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to implement an annual review system for textbooks, ensuring necessary changes are made before printing new editions for each academic session, as per officials familiar with the matter.

NCERT traditionally releases new textbooks at the onset of every academic session. While there was previously no fixed mandate for yearly reviews, the Council has been actively revising and updating content since 2017. Significant changes were made between 2022 and 2023 as part of syllabus rationalization efforts amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to senior officials at the Ministry, the council now has been asked to yearly review the content. “The Ministry has told the NCERT that books should be reviewed on a yearly basis. They are soon going to put that system in place. It is important that when a student buys a book ahead of the new session it has to be the updated version of that book,” said an official.

According to an official, the rationale behind this directive is to incorporate any necessary changes or additions, such as emerging topics like Artificial Intelligence (AI), into textbooks before they are printed. 

The NCERT has this year made some major changes in its History, Political Science and Sociology textbooks and dropped some references to the Babri Masjid, the politics of Hindutva, the 2002 Gujarat riots, and minorities, adding references to abrogation of Article 370, replacing the term “Azad Pakistan” with “Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK)”, and revised a paragraph defining the Left as those who prefer “state regulation over free competition”.