Odisha government to reduce school syllabus due to COVID-19 lockdown

Odisha government has decided to reduce the school syllabus of students for the academic year 2020-21 amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Bhubaneswar: In order to make up for the loss of academic time during the COVID-19 outbreak the Council of Higher Secondary Education, Odisha has decided to reduce the school curriculum for 2020-21. The specifics of the syllabus reduction will be finalised after a meeting is held by the syllabus committee of CHSE Odisha through video conferencing in the upcoming weeks.

According to reports, Dr Pranab Mangaraj, Secretary, CHSE, in a letter addressed to the school principles and board officials stated that due to the COVID-19 pandemic and consequent lockdown, classroom teaching has been adversely affected during the current academic session.

He further stated that in order to draw out the views and arrive at a decision in this regard, the meeting of the syllabus committee for the different subjects will be conducted via video conferencing.

Report to be submitted

In an official statement, it has been mentioned that the CBSE and the other boards have already taken the necessary steps to reduce the syllabus and keeping in mind the situation, Odisha has also been allowed to consider reducing the syllabus of different subjects during the 2020-21 session by the government.

A report will be submitted after discussions by the Chairman of the Syllabus committee to the secretary of CHSE. In the letter, the board secretary has asked the committee members to go through the syllabus of different subjects and make an analysis regarding the portions which need to be dropped.

CBSE Syllabus Reduction

Earlier, the Central Board of Secondary Education had announced its decision to reduce the syllabus for the students by 30 per cent, keeping in mind the COVID-19 lockdown in the country.

Along with the CBSE, state boards including Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Goa have also decided to reduce the school syllabus keeping in mind the lockdown situation. The decision of the CBSE to reduce the school syllabus had however invited huge criticism since some of the chapters on Federalism, Secularism, Citizenship, etc were dropped.