The Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) has now clarified that all the schools across India affiliated to the board can prescribe any textbooks to the students other than the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Earlier, it was reported that CBSE was making the NCERT books mandatory to all its students for the academic year to discourage them from buying textbooks from the private publishers.
NCERT books no more mandatory for CBSE schools
While clearing up all the doubts, CBSE has recently informed Rajya Sabha in writing that prescribing NCERT books at all its affiliated school is not at all mandatory. No such directions or curricular by the board has been issued to the schools making the NCERT published books compulsory for the students. The review of all the NCERT textbooks and updation in the syllabus is due and will be carried out soon.
Also Check – CBSE 10th & 12th Board 2018 Exam
Other details about NCERT books in CBSE schools
Apart from this, CBSE is now going to introduce GST, demonetization, Swatch Bharat Abhiyaan, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Char Sahibzade in the syllabus of the NCERT books. Earlier, this year, the board had confirmed the amendment in the syllabus that will get implemented from the upcoming academic year 2018-19. Also, CBSE has guided all its affiliated schools to sell NCERT books and stationeries online as well as on their premises.
However, CBSE will now focus on its core function of affiliation process, maintaining quality education system and conducting of annual board examinations only as it’s soon going to hand over National Eligibility-cum-Entrance-Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) type national entrance examination to NTA.
National Test Agency (NTA) is a single entrance examination conducting body for higher studies. It is constituted on the direction of the government of India that has the guidelines to conduct only JEE Main, NEET, University Grants Commission (UGC) National Eligibility Test (NET) and tests for Jawahar Navodya Vidhyalayas across India, till date but is expected to soon conduct entrance exams for IITs, IIMs and AICTE.
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