National Curriculum Framework:
In spite of the recommendations of the NPE, 1986 to
identify competencies and values to be nurtured at
different stages, school education came to be driven
more and more by high-stake examinations based on
information-loaded textbooks. Despite the review of
the Curriculum Framework in 2000, the vexed issues of
curriculum load and the tyranny of examinations
remained unresolved. The current review exercise takes
into cognizance both positive and negative
developments in the field, and attempts to address the
future requirements of school education at the turn of
the century. In this endeavor, several interrelated
dimensions have been kept in mind, namely, the aims of
education, the social milieu of children, the nature of
knowledge in its broader sense, the nature of human
development, and the process of human learning.
The term National Curriculum Framework is
often wrongly construed to mean that an instrument
of uniformity is being proposed. The intention as
articulated in the NPE, 1986 and the Programme of
Action (PoA) 1992 was quite the contrary. NPE
proposed a national framework for curriculum as a
means of evolving a national system of education
capable of responding to India’s diversity of
geographical and cultural milieus while ensuring a
common core of values along with academic
components. “The NPE - PoA envisaged a
child-centred approach to promote universal enrollment
and universal retention of children up to 14 years of
age and substantial improvement in the quality of
education in the school” (PoA, P. 77). The PoA further
elaborated on this vision of NPE by emphasising
relevance, flexibility and quality as characteristics of the
National Curriculum Framework. Thus, both these
documents envisioned the National Curriculum
Framework as a means of modernising the system of
education .
