The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) Friday clarified that no topics have been dropped from the draft Class 9 Mathematics syllabus, following concerns over changes in the subject content. It said instead some topics have been incorporated into other chapters rather than retained as standalone units.The council also recently released the part 2 of class 9 mathematics books — Ganita Manjari 2 — earlier this week.“To address the specific concerns mentioned about the Grade 9 mathematics draft syllabus: in fact, no overall topics were dropped from the draft syllabus, but some topics were incorporated into various other chapters instead of becoming standalone chapters,” NCERT said.It said that as per the NEP and National Curriculum Framework for School education, the school curriculum should be “understood and implemented through Curricular Goals, Competencies and Learning Outcomes — not merely through a count of chapter titles in a textbook.”The “draft” NCERT syllabus released earlier was just that — a draft syllabus — meant as an initial proposal for feedback from teachers, students, and authors/educators, NCERT said.“It was based on this feedback, the draft syllabus will be finalised and released in October by NCERT/CBSE…In the NCF-SE design, Curricular Goals state the broader aims of a curricular area (subject) at a stage; Competencies describe what learners should be able to attain at the end of that stage; and Learning Outcomes provide observable milestones for planning teaching–learning and assessment in every grade,” the council said.It said that the textbooks are one of the teaching-learning resources that help realise these goals, competencies and outcomes through a coherent organisation of content, activities, examples and opportunities for application.Story continues below this ad“The purpose of a textbook chapter is to support competency development; chapterisation is merely a pedagogical arrangement, not an end in itself,” the council said.It said that to address the specific concerns mentioned about the Grade 9 mathematics draft syllabus: in fact, no overall topics were dropped from the draft syllabus, but some topics were incorporated into various other chapters instead of becoming standalone chapters.“Specifically, many key new ideas and applications of Lines and Angles (on which there was already a full, dedicated chapter in Grade 6, Ganita Prakash, Chapter 2) are contained in Grade 9 Part 2’s chapters on “Propositions and Their Converses” (Chapter 9) and “Quadrilaterals” (Chapter 12),” it said.Similarly, key ideas from Euclidean geometry — which refers to the geometry of flat two-dimensional space, including the concepts of polygons, circles, parallel and intersecting lines, etc —are extensively treated in Chapters 5, 6, 9, 12, and 13 of the Grade 9 mathematics textbook, it added.Story continues below this ad“After extensive consultation with and feedback from teachers and educators, it was decided not to have the traditional abstract axiom-theorem-proof chapter on the topic, but instead to have students explore and thereby develop conceptual understanding of the core concepts and their applications across various chapters,” NCERT said.Further, the council said that with the rapid recent progression of AI, it was deemed important in a modern education for students to have an understanding of the concepts of algorithms, data structures, and running time efficiency from a mathematical point of view, as these notions will be very critical in the coming years.NCERT also pointed out that “Modern AI is all based on mathematics” and that the “New Education Policy (NEP) mandate for all students to learn computational thinking has never been more important.”“Thus, even though a standalone module on AI is being developed, it was considered crucial for students to also explore the mathematical notions that lie behind AI in their mathematics classes; hence, a chapter on algorithms was considered important to add in Grade 9,” the council said.Story continues below this adNCERT’s new textbooks across curricular areas, including Mathematics and Social Science, have been developed to enable learners to achieve the suggestive Curricular Goals, Competencies and Learning Outcomes in an integrated, experiential and meaningful manner, in line with NEP 2020 and NCF-SE 2023, it said.The council further added that the schools, teachers, School Boards and other stakeholders are advised to plan classroom processes and assessment with reference to the Competencies.“Drawing inferences on the coverage of the curriculum only by matching the number of printed chapter headings with entries in the syllabus document does not reflect the intent of competency-based education,” it said.