Teachers Over Textbooks: Delhi to Build Its Own Curriculum

The Delhi government recently announced two major education reforms: first, scrapping traditional learning by rote and moving toward more innovative methods of learning and, second, establishing its own school managing body, the Delhi Board of School Education. Both steps are ambitious, at least on paper, and the second is rather risky. But before going further, it’s important to understand the system of affiliating schools with government bodies in India and the status of Delhi.

Broadly speaking, a school in India may be private or public. Private schools may either follow their own curriculum or a government one. Public schools are usually of two kinds: either following a curriculum prescribed by the state government or that of the central government. A secondary school may not only adhere to the curriculum (i.e. use the prescribed textbooks) but also choose to affiliate itself to a government body: a board of secondary education. Such an affiliation is granted on the basis of the school fulfilling certain criteria, but it also translates to certain advantages. If a school includes an intermediate college (i.e. classes XI-XII, the last two before college), affiliation with a government board means that the institution has the right to hold the intermediate exam for its graduates, a gateway to university-level education. Thus, many schools do seek affiliation with government boards, and especially the central one – the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) – which has a reputation of offering a better curriculum.

Let us take one example – the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Private secondary schools in the state may either affiliate themselves with the state’s secondary board of education or to the federal-level board, CBSE; they may, of course, choose not to affiliate, or perhaps are unable to fulfill the conditions of affiliation. As for public government schools, they will mostly by default be affiliated with the state board, but some may be affiliated with the CBSE, or may aim to shift to the CBSE curriculum. Thus, many better and aspiring private and government schools in that state will be striving to get themselves affiliated with the CBSE, aware of the greater options and the image that come with it.

I once compared how history was being taught on a state and central level in the case of the state of Uttarakhand. The textbooks used by the CBSE are published by another central body, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). These turned out to be much better and much more detailed than the social science textbooks published by Uttarakhand’s state education board.

But that is the case of regular Indian states; Delhi is even more complicated.

Delhi is the seat of the central government, but it does not fall within the borders of any state. As a broader administrative territory (as distinguished from its role as the country’s capital), Delhi is a unit in its own right. This unit, called the National Capital Territory of Delhi, has less power than a state but it still enjoys autonomy in many regards. Delhi has, for instance, its own legislative assembly and a government but does not control its own police. When it comes to managing schools, the Delhi government has a large say in how they are run and funded but it does not write the curriculum, as, until recently, the territory did not have its own board of secondary education. Thus, all government schools in Delhi are affiliated with the CBSE.

That division of power would probably not have been an issue if the same party ruled on both levels of government, but this is not the case. Ironically, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rules all of India, but its central government, located in the capital, shares the city with another government – that of the territory of Delhi, ruled by a rival: the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

This situation has been a source of near constant friction, even though over the past few years the AAP has shed much of its combative image of a party of social activists and started to talk in a more polite political manner more similar to that of the BJP. So far, education was not a central element in their tug-of-war. The AAP government did try, however, to raise the quality of schools, chiefly by irrigating the field of education with larger funds, not only for new school buildings and new equipment, but also for teacher training. Given its insistence of the quality of education, it is not surprising that the AAP government has declared that it wants to move away from a system based on rote memorization – and it is a desirable reform as well, not only in India.

Yet, another part of the Delhi government’s plan is to manage its own board of secondary education. The institution was approved at the beginning of March 2021, and a first small batch of schools are to be affiliated with it in the 2021-22 academic year. This should mean that eventually the Delhi board will publish its own textbooks, although I doubt that they will be introduced in 2021.

In terms of politics and the political narrative, the AAP’s move is understandable. Just like its government is not controlling Delhi policy, it does not control the textbooks used in the city’s secondary schools either. It may fund the schools, equip them, and train the teachers but until now it could not change the textbooks. Within the syllabus, the subject of history is usually one of the most useful tools for crafting political narratives, and on paper this tool is now nearly completely in the hands of the central BJP government (“on paper” is a significant addition, however – a textbook is but a publication and it is the teacher and the students who choose how to use it). While Modi’s central government did not make large-scale changes to NCERT textbooks, despite being in power since 2014, it is free to make them at any point in the near future. It would thus not be surprising for the AAP to work out its own curriculum, write its own textbooks, and build its own narrative around them.

But in terms of parental expectations and managerial choices of schools, the reform is risky. As mentioned above, the tendency is for better schools to affiliate with the CBSE, and in the midst of this process the Delhi government is trying to do the reverse. Delhi government schools will apparently be gradually affiliated with the city’s new board, but private schools will still have a choice. It must be added here that Delhi has more private schools than public ones – in general, many Indian private schools have a better reputation than average government institutions. Delhi’s middle classes – the city’s most important electoral constituency – chiefly send their children to private schools, as most richer people in India do in general. If these customers remain of the opinion that a CBSE syllabus is better than whatever new one the Delhi board unveils, there will be no large migration of the city’s private schools to the city’s education board.

However, it must be stressed again that in education, the classroom transaction process is a central aspect. Thus, it is not surprising that the AAP government in Delhi is promising a two-pronged reform: establishing a new board (i.e. eventually changing the syllabus) and changing the methods of teaching. The first is easier to do, but it is the second reform that is more important. Should the reform succeed in breaking the old iron barriers of routinized learning and mindless memorization, such a change will be of far greater consequence than editing textbooks. This is an area where the Delhi government has the power to act and space to maneuver: It may choose how to train the teachers, for instance, and may earmark more funds for that purpose.

Thus, the AAP’s government education reform is a gambit that may pay off. It will be hard for the new Delhi board to come up with textbooks that will surpass the NCERT ones in quality, at least in a short span of time. But if the board succeeds in introducing new methods of teaching, then the contents of the textbooks, while still significant, will remain secondary in importance. If middle-class parents recognize such success, then the city’s private schools, sensing their clients’ expectations, may gradually move to the Delhi board in order to apply the new system of teaching. After all, when we reminisce about our school years, do we think more of the textbooks or the teachers?