The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Learning the irrelevancy and taxing nature of the syllabus practiced in the education system, the rationalized curriculum, also known as curriculum thinning will be implemented this academic session.
The Director of the Royal Education Council (REC), Kinga Dakpa said the work started since the beginning of 2017 which involved the curriculum experts and experienced personnel for every subject.
The rationalized curriculum will be applied for classes PP to twelve for all the subjects.
Kinga Dakpa said the recommendations on thinning the curriculum came up during the National School Curriculum Conference 2016 where the concerns on the need to re-look into the curriculum were brought up. “Concerns regarding the content of subject which is irrelevant to the current context and content thickness were raised.”
He said it doesn’t make sense to teach everything given the irrelevancy of some of the syllabus which adds weight to both teachers and students. “This also detaches the focus on the important contents”.
The implementation will be in action after the discussion with the education ministry by the end of this month. “The implementation will begin this academic session itself after the discussion with the education ministry.”
He said the implementation process will include briefing the teachers on the change of the content in respective schools. He added the process doesn’t include reprinting the whole textbook. “Teachers will just need to omit some of the contents which are not necessary to teach in respective subjects and grades.”
The maneuver is first of its kind in the country where the contents have been mostly dependent on the traditional system. The REC meanwhile has completed the review works.
He said such implementation will also have an advantage where the concern over syllabus coverage with the exemption of Saturday classes can also be eased. “It just coincided so well that one implementation can take advantage of the other.”
Education Minister JB Rai during the last interview also said that while syllabus coverage should not be a concern even after exempting the Saturday classes, the upcoming program on curriculum thinning will help ease the concerns over syllabus coverage.
