Kathmandu, July 8

The Curriculum Development Centre, which had abandoned its plan to introduce a new curriculum in Grade XI last year, has not been able to implement the new curriculum this academic session too.

The new academic session for Grade XI is starting from mid-July.

CDC had not been able to bring the new curriculum last year due to lack of sufficient preparation to implement it.

The eighth amendment to the Education Act brought in June 2016 has envisioned replacing the stream-based education system with single-track curriculum in grades IX and XII. The new curriculum envisages making four subjects — Nepali, English, Social Studies and applied education — compulsory for Grade XI students. Apart from these, students must choose at least three more subjects as per the stream of their choice.

Currently, Grade XI students are not obliged to take more than five subjects, of which up to two subjects are compulsory and based on streams like Science, Management, Humanities and Education.

With the amendment, Grade X board exams, also known as school leaving certificate, was replaced with secondary education examination. Based on the changes, CDC was planning to roll out a new curriculum for Grade XI in the last academic year and extend it to Grade XII this year. However, in the last one year, CDC did nothing towards this end — it has not yet finalised the curriculum of Grade XI, let alone any other preparation for implementation.

“We are still working on finalising the curriculum of optional subjects for Grade XI. It is very likely that the new curriculum will be implemented from academic year 2020-21,” said CDC Director General Lekh Nath Poudel. He said they needed to frame the curriculum for more than 100 optional subjects, which had taken more time than expected.

According to Poudel, the curriculum of four compulsory subjects has already been finalised. CDC officials said that the finalised curriculum had been forwarded to the Ministry of Education as per the approval of National Curriculum Development and Evaluation Council.

They also informed that the proposed curriculum after being approved by the council would be approved by the Cabinet before getting final shape.

However, some high-level officials at CDC expressed doubt regarding implementation of the new curriculum from the next academic year.

The CDC has implemented the new curriculum of Grade I in 103 community schools throughout the country as a pilot project. “We are framing the new curriculum of higher grades and we will implement the new curriculum from the next year if every thing goes as planned,” Poudel said.