By Joseph Varghese
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), India has introduced a number of vocational subjects for class XI from the academic year 2014-2015.
The new subjects that the senior secondary students can pick from include legal studies, theatre and gender studies as an elective. Each of these electives will be offered with a combination of three other subjects and a language. These subjects are offered formally after a successful pilot run of them in some of the selected schools in India.
Enquiries with Indian schools in Qatar revealed that the subjects will not be offered for the students as of this academic year. Principals of various schools pointed out that the academic year in Qatar starts from April which gives them very little time to arrange the materials and faculty for the subjects. Moreover there is also the problem of space constraint in most of the schools.
However, MES Indian School principal A P Sasidharan said that the school was planning to offer Humanities Stream from this academic year.
He said: “MES will be the first school to offer Humanities in Qatar. We have been getting a lot of queries for Humanities for some time now and there is a great demand for the course in Qatar. To begin with, we will offer history, economics, physical education and computer science or Information technology as the subjects in the stream.”
He added that some of the new subjects offered by CBSE might be added to the stream in the coming years.
The new course offered by CBSE is known Knowledge Traditions and Practices of India and offers various avenues to students to learn and prepare themselves for future. These courses are mainly for the senior secondary students. For middle school, the board is offering Chinese language for which the pilot phase is under way in 25 schools in India.
According to CBSE, the course aims to create awareness about law, administration of justice, need for equality of opportunity, drama and theatre and have an understanding of the history of gender and division of labour.
CBSE observed that the demand for such courses is picking up and these vocational courses will help students get a sense of other career options other than the run of the mill options
available at present.
The first batch of students with these subjects as options will take their board examinations in March 2015. A CBSE circular regarding the course highlighted that the pilot run “received an overwhelming response from educationists and the teaching community all over India”.
The circular added that “it aims to engage students with a sense of exploration and discovery while highlighting the concepts and major achievements in various disciplines of
knowledge”.
All the three subjects are bound to appeal to a lot of students as there will be additional career options. The legal studies will include theory and nature of political institutions, nature and sources of law, historical evolution of Indian legal system, civil and criminal courts and processes, family justice system, arbitration, tribunal adjudication and alternate dispute resolution, human rights in India, the international context and an overview of the legal profession in India.
Similarly the other two topics also offer many fresh options for the students.