Primary school students will learn about Kaavi art, Goa rivers in new NEP textbooks

Gauree.Malkarnekar@timesofindia.comPanaji: From this academic year 2026-27, textbooks aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) are now in force in all classes from I to VIII, as per the revised books provided by the NCERT. Local contextualisation has been carried out for the social science subject, known as ‘the world around us’ in primary classes.Director of the state council for educational research and training (SCERT), Meghana Shetgaonkar, said that children will learn some local content too, like about Goa’s only native painting style, Kaavi, and Goa’s rivers and folk arts.“We had implemented new textbooks in Class III and VI during the last academic year. This academic year, the new NCERT textbooks have been implemented in Classes I, II, IV, V, VII, and VIII. Now, all grades have NEP-aligned textbooks. In the case of Konkani and Marathi language textbooks, we framed various committees who reviewed local textbooks, looked for suitable content to be added, and created content where there are gaps. A vetting committee vetted it and a steering committee approved it,” said Shetgaonkar.She said the new NEP-aligned textbooks are more activity-based and multidisciplinary in nature.“For instance, in the language textbooks too, there are components of history and science. Now, we are moving towards competency-based teaching-learning. We had bridge courses for teachers for Class VI to VIII in April and another 15 days of another bridge course on activity-based teaching in June is on. We have also retained bilingual textbooks for primary classes in Goa because NEP promotes primary education in mother tongue but also encourages exposure to other languages,” said Shetgaonkar.She said that work will also be taken up to further review R3 or third language textbooks of Konkani, Marathi, and Hindi from Class VI to VIII.“For now, we are implementing the Hindi textbook, for instance, as is. But some portions will be kept only for reading, and students will not be assessed on it, as Goa students may find the textbooks in Hindi a bit tougher. We will review how students adapt to it and we will review by next academic year,” she said.