The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Chairperson of the National Council (NC) recently posted online the mistakes he found in the Class V Social Studies textbook. Dasho (Dr) Sonam Kinga pointed out mistakes, such as errors in spellings, facts and grammar in the textbook.
“This is unacceptable! We cannot teach children using textbooks containing such errors,” the NC Thrizin pointed out.
Dean of Royal Education Council (REC), Wangpo Tenzin, said that there can be grammar and spelling errors but not conceptual errors. He said just a few highly qualified teachers and curriculum officials were involved in planning and writing the contents previously.
He said the process of copy editing was lacking at the time of writing the textbooks. He added that typing and printing errors are to blame as well. “We were entirely relying on the Indian curriculum and after the sudden change was brought into transforming the whole content in Bhutanese curriculum, this would have led to an error due to typing, printing and lesser manpower.”
Currently, REC has only a few qualified individuals to write the curriculum. REC Dean said that the government rate in commissioning the work to foreign expertise is very low. “So, we landed up relying on ourselves,” he added.
He said REC is trying its best to ensure quality and an error-free content of school textbooks by reviewing every subject at various levels, and subjecting some new curriculum-based on modern education.
“Since more brains are better, we are involving a larger number of highly qualified and experienced teachers and curriculum development professionals this time,” he added.
REC plans to allocate higher budget to revise the subjects, like Social Studies, History and Geography.
The revision for Science and IT curriculum was completed this year, which is to be implemented in 2017 academic session.
