High-power committee submits report to govt

Chennai, Nov 30 (UNI) The high-power committee constituted by the Tamil Nadu School Education Ministry and headed by State Planning Commission Vice-Chairman Prof M Naganathan, to recommend changes in the syllabi of classes 11 and 12, today submitted its recommendations to the state government.

Talking to mediapersons here, State School Education Minister Thangam Thennarasu said the committee has recommended the omissions of certain chapters from ten subjects, including Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Botany.

Mr Thennarasu asserted that there would not be any change in the question paper pattern for class 12.

''The questions from the difficuilt chapters will be substituted by the other chapters, so there will be no change in the question paper pattern,'' he said.

''We will send a circular to all the schools, about the omissions and the recommendations will be uploaded on the school education website,'' he added.

Pointing out that the pass percentage in the class 12 examination had gone down because of the tough syllabus, Prof Naganathan said, ''we reviewed the class 11 and 12 syllabus and found the content good, but the way it was written made it tough for the students to understand. The committee decided that the History and Economics textbooks for class 11 needs to be re-written as there were numerous mistakes and misleading facts.'' The modified textbooks for class 11 and 12 would be provided to students during the academic year 2007-08 and a recommendation was also made to remove the chapters that were tough with immediate effect, so that there would be no questions from those chapters in the examination, he added.

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