According to the National Council of Educational Research and Training, the Periodic Table has not been removed from the school curriculum and is covered in great detail in the Class 11 textbook.
In this regard, NCERT’s official Twitter account stated, “Periodic Table has not been removed from school education curriculum but is, in fact, available in great detail in Unit 3 -“Classification of Elements and periodicity in properties” (Page 74-99) of Class 11th textbook.”
Previously, in an effort to reduce the burden on students, NCERT dropped the entire chapter on Periodic Classification of Elements, the entire chapter on Democracy and Diversity, the entire chapter on Challenges to Democracy, and the entire page on Political Parties from the newly released textbooks of Class 10 students.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCERT has decided to reduce the content load on students. Complete chapters on the aforementioned subjects have now been deleted as part of a “rationalisation” intended to reduce the “burden on students.”
“The National Education Policy 2020, also emphasises reducing the content load and providing opportunities for experiential learning with a creative mindset,” according to the NCERT website. In light of this, NCERT has begun the process of rationalising textbooks across all grades. This exercise took into account Learning Outcomes already developed by the NCERT across classes.
“The textbook contents have been rationalised in light of overlapping with similar content included in other subject areas in the same class, similar content included in the lower or higher class in the same subject, and similar content included in the lower or higher class in the same subject.”
Level of difficulty Content that is easily accessible to students without requiring much intervention from teachers and that children can learn through self-learning or peer-learning NCERT also stated, “Content that is irrelevant in the current context.”
