Fifteen ‘unpopular’ subjects including four languages will soon be dropped from the Higher Secondary School curriculum in Tamil Nadu. The state School Education Department recently issued an order notifying the government’s decision to do away with the subjects for which there was not much demand.According to the order, the Language papers — Gujarati, Persian, German and Latin — will be scrapped from the school curriculum ‘‘since the number of candidates appearing for these papers is less than 50.’’Eleven other subjects — Ayurveda, Psychology, Drawing and Painting, Sociology, Foundation Science, Siddha, Indian Music, Western Music, Logic, Advanced English and Philosophy — will be dropped from the list of subjects for Higher Secondary classes due to poor demand. However, Advanced Tamil ‘‘shall be retained as one of the optional subject in Group III and IV,’’ the order said.The Department has decided to introduce Computer Science as one of the subject from IX standard and later extend it from VI to VIII standard. The authorities have also decided to introduce science experiments for classes IX and X. One period per week will be allotted for practicals.As for a request from the Director of School Education that the CBSE system be followed for the Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic and French languages (since the State Board system was at an elementary level), the government said the opinion of the respective language experts should be obtained before taking a final decision on the issue. The decision was based on a set of ‘Principles of Revised Curriculum’ evolved by a High Level Expert Committee constituted by the government in 2002. The Director of School Education had requested the government to ‘‘approve the set of principles of revised curriculum.’’According to the norms for continuing a certain course, in schools located in urban areas there should be ‘‘a minimum of 30 students per group in Academic stream and 20 students in Vocational stream’’. For institutions situated in rural areas the minimum capacity is 15 students for Academic and 10 for Vocational stream.
