HRD ministry issues guidelines for online classes, caps duration to limit screen time

In his latest guidelines, The HRD ministry recommended that the online classes for pre-primary students should not be more 30 minutes. The guidelines aim to cap the duration of online classes to limit students’ screen time.

As classroom learning shifts online in view of Covid-19 pandemic, The HRD ministry on Tuesday has issued a set of new guidelines for schools, in a bid to regulate the screen time for students. In its latest circular, the ministry said that the online classes for pre-primary students should not be more 30 minutes. There should be two online sessions of up to 45 minutes each for classes 1-8 and four sessions of 45 minutes each for classes 9-12.

The move comes after the CBSE’s decision to reduce syllabus for academic session 2020-2021 by up to 30% as a one-time measure. This was followed by a controversy as several key chapters like Democratic rights, Federalism, Citizenship and Secularism were dropped.

Reacting to the criticism, HRD Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank tweeted that there has been a lot of uninformed commentary around exclusion of some topics. He alleged that these comments resort to sensationalism as efforts are made to portray a false narrative.

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Ahead of HRD Minister’s clarification, WB CM Mamata Banerjee had also slammed CBSE’s decision to drop some of the key topics. She tweeted that she is shocked to know that Centre has dropped topics like citizenship, secularism and others in the name of reducing CBSE course.

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