Sindh to adopt only core curriculum subjects, not entire federal syllabus.

Byline: Tahir Siddiqui

KARACHI -- Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Thursday sought a clarification from the Federal Ministry of Education and Professional Training on the implementation of the Single National Curriculum, saying that the provincial government might adopt only core curriculum subjects with minimum standards that could be further enriched by the province.

Presiding over a meeting to discuss the 'Single National Curriculum Plan' of the federal government, the chief minister asked the federal government to provide necessary clarification whether the province was to adopt the entire national curriculum or only core subjects of the Single National Curriculum.

'The Sindh government may adopt Single National Curriculum containing only core curriculum subjects with the minimum standards and further enrich it followed by the development of provincial curriculum of the remaining subjects such as languages, social studies, etc,' he added.

The meeting was attended by Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani, CM's Adviser on Law Murtaza Wahab and other officers and experts.

Briefing the CM, the education minister said that a meeting was held on the Single National Curriculum (SNC) by the National Curriculum Council (NCC) with the federal education minister in chair in Sept 2019.

He said in order to implement the SNC, it was decided that the SNC developed by the federal ministry of education should be taken into consideration by provinces through holding review workshops at provincial level. 'Once approved by the provinces, this SNC will be implemented nationally,' Saeed Ghani told the CM.

Provinces are empowered to design their own curricula after 18th Amendment, meeting told

The chief minister said that in view of 18th Amendment, the education portfolio was delegated as a provincial subject and since then the Sindh government had been working on curriculum as part of its provincial mandate and adopted the national curriculum 2006 and revised the curriculum on international models.

Mr Ghani said that in 2015, the Sindh government enacted The Sindh School Education Standards and Curriculum Act passed by the Sindh Assembly. He added that under the law, the Sindh Curriculum Council was established and the Bureau of Curriculum was reconstituted as Directorate of Curriculum Assessment and Research.

He said that the provincial education department had designed a curriculum for social studies for class VI to VIII using an integrated approach...