The NCF will raise standards of school education in the country

livemint.com:

NEW DELHI : The National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF) released by the ministry of education (MoE) is intended to guide school education. Since education is not only relevant to its immediate participants but is critical to the well-being of society at large, it is useful to understand what the NCF is about. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a member of the group the ministry constituted to develop it.

Curriculum refers to the entire experience of children in schools in pursuit of educational objectives—the learning goals, syllabus, pedagogical practices, teaching-learning-materials, classroom practices, culture of schools, and more. This expansive notion of curriculum is important to use rather than a narrow definition because children’s learning is shaped by all these aspects. This broad understanding of curriculum is more real than the narrower idea that includes only the syllabus, content, pedagogy and assessment.

The NCF is not a curriculum; it’s a framework to develop curricula. As a framework, it describes the principles, goals, structures and elements for the development of curricula, which will then guide the syllabus, teaching-learning material including textbooks and assessment (examinations). All of these will have to be developed by appropriate institutions at the state level, like boards or other bodies responsible for schools.

The NCF will guide the pedagogy, as also the practices that determine school culture and other experiences of school students that schooling systems will have to nurture, change and develop. Such a common national framework enables harmony and cogency in school education across Indian states, while recognizing that school education is the domain of states. The