Standard IX students in CBSE schools will not study communicative english, Information and Communication technology, e-Publishing and e-Office from the next academic year, that is 2018-19. However, students currently pursuing these subjects in class 9 have been allowed to continue it. CBSE has also changed names of some of the subjects – sanskrit communicative has been replaced by sanskrit and Foundations of Information technology has been renamed as Computer Applications.
For class XI students, Mohiniyattam dance, multimedia and web technology and english elective have been discontinued. In computer science, schools have been given two options – computer science new and computer science old. They can offer any of these in the upcoming academic session, however they have been encouraged to take up computer science new. From 2019-20, only computer science new will be offered.
The academic regulator for schools has also merged some of the elective subjects in class XI with vocational subjects. These will now be offered as vocational electives from the next academic session. Schools can now offer vocational oriented subjects such as fashion studies, mass media studies and agriculture.
Last year, CBSE had dropped 34 vocational and 7 academic subjects due to low enrolment. Experts say that unpopularity might be the reason for discontinuation of some of the subjects this time as well.
CBSE had recently invited suggestions from teachers, academics, students, parents and any other stakeholders associated with the school education system for curriculum revision and to make the content more balanced.