The new National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks for the school academic year 2024-25 will most likely only be introduced for Class 3 and 6, as per sources in the Ministry of Education (MoE). Textbooks for Class 1 and 2 based on the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and National Education Policy 2020, have already been released, and are available in bookstores and on the NCERT website as PDFs for free. The MoE had, on November 10, 2023, said that textbooks for all grades, from Classes 1 to 12 would be introduced in the upcoming academic year, in line with the new NCF launched last year.
While notifying curricular area groups responsible for drafting textbooks last year, the NCERT had indicated that the timeline for submitting the final draft of textbooks for all classes was February 10. The MoE sources say that textbook drafts for Class 3 have been received. These drafts, including those for English, Hindi, and Urdu, Maths, and ‘The World Around Us,’ earlier known as Environmental Studies (EVS), are being proof-read, edited and vetted by the NCERT before they are published and circulated to schools across the country.
For Class 6, textbook drafts for Maths, Science, and the languages (English, Hindi, Urdu, and Sanskrit) are also in the process of being finalised. It is also likely for History, Geography, and Political Science to be merged into one textbook of Social Science. Currently, Class 6 students study from three publications: Our Pasts; Our Earth: Our Habitat; Social and Political Life. “However there is no clarity on this yet as those drafts have not been received for vetting,” the MoE source said.
