National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2023 Draft

GS Paper - 2 (Education)

The Ministry of Education released the pre-draft of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for school education for public feedback on the recommendations which will be finalised after further rounds of discussions involving the national steering committee led by former ISRO chairperson K Kasturirangan that developed it.

What is NCF?

1. The NCF, which was last revised in 2005 under the UPA government, is a key document based on which textbooks are prepared.
2. So the current set of NCERT textbooks, barring the deletions, is all based on the NCF 2005.
3. Before 2005, the NCF was revised thrice, including once under the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
4. Under the latest round of revision, which is underway since September 2021, draft frameworks on early childhood care and education and school education have already been prepared, while work on teacher and adult education is underway.
5. Apart from textbooks, the NCF, after its adoption by the CBSE and other state boards, will also restructure various other aspects of the classroom, including choice of subjects, pattern of teaching, and assessment.

What are the proposed changes?

1. Among the most significant recommendations in the draft NCF on school education are about choice of subjects and exams in classes IX-XII.
2. Over two years, in class IX and X, the students will have to study 16 courses categorised under eight curricular areas.
3. The suggested curricular areas are Humanities (that includes languages), Mathematics & Computing, Vocational Education, Physical Education, Arts, Social Science, Science, and Inter-disciplinary Areas.
4. Students will have to clear eight board exams, each of which will assess their hold on courses they learnt in class IX and X, to obtain the final certification which will factor in their performances in exams held over two years.
5. Under the current system, there are no such links between class IX and X and students across most boards have to pass at least five subjects to clear class X.
6. The committee has recommended more changes at the level of Class XI and XII, including the introduction of a semester system in class XII.
7. The NCF pre-draft on school education is not so much about specific changes in textbooks as those details will be put out in the position papers being developed by the 12-member steering committee and sub-committees of experts under it known as focus groups.

LIGO-India get green signal

GS Paper -3 (Space Technology)

The government has given the final go-ahead to India’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, project, clearing the way for the construction of the country’s biggest scientific facility that will join the on-going global project to probe the universe by detecting and studying gravitational waves.

More about the news:

v  LIGO is an international network of laboratories that detect the ripples in spacetime produced by the movement of large celestial objects like stars and planets.

v  These ripples were first postulated in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that encapsulates our current understanding of how gravitation works.

v  LIGO-India will be located in Hingoli district of Maharashtra, about 450 km east of Mumbai, and is scheduled to begin scientific runs from 2030.

General Theory of Relativity

v  In 1915, Einstein altered our understanding of gravitation with his General Theory of Relativity.

v  With Special Relativity, he has shown that space and time were not independent entities but had to be woven together as spacetime.

v  With General Relativity,he proposed that spacetime was not just a passive backdrop to the events happening in the universe. It was not a mere transparent, inert, and static stage; instead, spacetime interacted with matter, was influenced by it and in turn, itself influenced events.

Origin of gravitational force:

Einstein was able to explain the origin of the gravitational force, and also the reason for perpetual, near-circular, motion of all heavenly bodies.

Gravitational waves:

General Relativity also predicted that moving objects would generate gravitational waves in spacetime, just like a moving boat produces ripples in water; gravitational waves have the effect of causing a temporary deformation in a body when it comes in contact.

Functioning of LIGO

Ø  It is to measure these tiny effects of gravitational waves that scientists have set up the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), one of the most complex pieces of scientific equipment ever built.

Ø  The observatory comprises two 4-km-long vacuum chambers, built perpendicular to each other. Highly reflective mirrors are placed at the end of the vacuum chambers.

Ø  Light rays are released simultaneously in both the vacuum chambers. They hit the mirrors, get reflected, and are captured back.

Ø  In normal circumstances, the light rays in both the chambers would return simultaneously. But when a gravitational wave arrives, one of the chambers gets a little elongated, while the other one gets squished a bit. In this case, light rays do not return simultaneously, and there is a phase difference. The presence of a phase difference marks the detection of a gravitational wave.

Ø  The first ever detection of a gravitational wave happened on September 14, 2015, by the two US-based LIGO detectors. These gravitational waves were produced by the merger of two black holes, which were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun, 1.3 billion years ago.

Significance of LIGO India:

v  LIGO India would be the fifth node of this international network of gravitational wave observatories, and possibly the last. The instruments at these observatories are so sensitive that they can easily get influenced by events like earthquakes, landslides, or even the movement of trucks, and produce a false reading.

v  The chances of two observatories, located in different geographies, producing the exact same false reading are negligible.

v  The LIGO website indicates that the India detector, the fifth node in the international network, could be all that is required for the time being.

Way Forward:

• LIGO is a momentous milestone andIndia has been an active collaborator in a number of international science projects. These include the Large Hadron Collider experiments, and ITER, the effort to create a thermonuclear reactor that would enable controlled nuclear fusion reactions.
• India is also expected to be a partner country in setting up the next space station after the current International Space Station comes to the end of its life later this decade.

Coastal aquaculture Bill 2023

GS Paper -2 (Acts)

The Government introduced the Coastal Aquaculture Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2023, seeks to amend certain provisions of the Coastal Aquaculture Authority Act, 2005 and decriminalise offences under it for “promoting ease of doing business” and fine-tuning the “operational procedures of Coastal Aquaculture Authority”.

More about the news:

v  The Bill seeks to clarify that “coastal aquaculture and activities connected therewith” shall continue to be regulated by “the Coastal Aquaculture Authority Act and no other Acts.”

v  The 2023 Bill seeks to broaden the definition of “coastal aquaculture” or “coastal aquaculture activity” to mean “rearing and cultivation of any life stages of fish, including crustacean, mollusc, finfish, seaweed or any other aquatic life under controlled conditions, either indoor or outdoor, in cement cisterns, ponds, pens, cages, rafts, enclosures or otherwise in saline or brackish water in coastal areas, including activities such as production of brood stock, seed, grow out, but does not include fresh water aquaculture.”

v  It aims to promote newer forms of environment-friendly coastal aquaculture such as “cage culture, seaweed culture, bi-valve culture, marine ornamental fish culture and pearl oyster culture”, and has the potential for creating employment opportunities on a large scale for coastal fisher communities and especially fisherwomen.

v  It also aims to encourage the establishment of facilities in areas having direct access to seawater to produce genetically improved and disease-free broodstocks and seeds for use in coastal aquaculture.

v  The Bill seeks to prevent the use of antibiotics and “pharmacologically active substances”, which are harmful to human health in coastal aquaculture.

Provisions for “biosecurity”

• It refers to measures and strategies for analysing, managing, and preventing the risk of introducing or spreading harmful organisms like viruses and bacteria within the coastal aquaculture unit, which could lead to infectious diseases.
• It provides for the introduction of a “Brood Stock Multiplication Centre” which receives “post-larvae or juvenile which are specific pathogen free” or tolerant or resistant to such pathogens or other post-larvae or juveniles from a “Nucleus Breeding Centre”, to be reared under strict biosecurity and disease surveillance.

About DAHDF:

v  The Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying, and Fisheries (DAHDF) was formed in 1991, earlier responsible for overseeing matters related to animal husbandry, dairy, and fisheries.

v  It advised states and UTs on the formulation of policies and programmes, in 2019, the Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying was subsumed under the newly created Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying.

The penalties and punishment under the Act:

v  The 2023 Bill seeks to change, by inserting Section 13A, which allows the CAA to “authorise any officer of the Authority or the State Government or the Central Government, not below the rank of Assistant Director of Fisheries in a District, to function as authorised officer to exercise such powers, to discharge such duties and perform such functions, as may be specified in that order.”

v  The new Section 13A also allows the Centre to authorise an officer not below the rank of government Under Secretary to function as an adjudicating officer imposing penalties under the Act.

v  The Centre can authorise any officer of the Authority or the State Government or the Central Government, not below the rank of Deputy Secretary, to function as the Appellate Authority.