Govt primary school kids to also learn about local culture now

: As part of a new initiative of the basic education department, curricula for government primary schools of Classes 1 to 5 will now be ‘localised’. The aim of the move is to familiarise students with their local culture, heritage, folk dance and music, which they would stand to benefit from.

Teachers will have the flexibility to teach beyond books and about things that may not necessarily be a part of the curricul um, an off i ci al s ai d. For instance, students in Balia and other East Uttar Pradesh districts will be told about local culture, heritage, food like Litti (Baati) chokha, etc, while in other districts students may learn about Ghevar, a sweet dish which is locally popular.

The basic education department, in association with Project Samuday of HCL Foundation, has developed an open educational resource portal, Vikalp, on which teachers will be able to create localised content which would be taught and may be shared elsewhere too.

Vikalp not only focuses on creating a repository of content but also developing an overall technology-integration model with the school ecosystem based on field experiences and interaction with teachers and students, said basic education director Sarvendra Vikram Bahadur Singh.

Basic education minister Satish Chand Dwivedi is to launch the portal on Thursday.

“Apart from being an accessible platform for digital content created by teachers, it encourages teachers for regular content creation and upgrade by the review and moderation committee,” said State Institution for Educational Training-UP director Lalita Pradeep.

This new portal hopes to map core subjects as well as extracurricular activities, webinars and workshops to create a knowledge exchange platform.