In an effort to make yoga an intrinsic part of every individual’s life, the Minister for Human Resource Development, Smriti Irani proposed introduction of yoga as a subject in central schools from Class 6 to Class 8. This development was mentioned in the first ever yoga conference organized by the Central Board of Secondary Education on June 22.
While Yoga is already taught as an optional subject in the government-run schools like the Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas, Irani said that schools boards can work towards opting yoga as a subject with 80 percentage practicals during which students have to perform various asanas.
Yoga is already taught as an optional subject in government-run schools like the Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas under the co-scholastic activity of Physical Education. Sources say the NCERT is soon likely to issue guidelines that would ensure yoga is taught in one out of the three physical education classes that are conducted every week in these schools.
The endeavour was supported by the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia who was also a part of Day 1 of the Yoga Conference.
An official strategy regarding the implementation of the yoga curriculum in the affiliated private schools is yet to be devised by the Central Board of Secondary Education.
The National Council of Teacher Education, in its revised notification, has made yoga a compulsory training module along with ICT, gender studies and inclusive education.
While a fixed date regarding introduction of the curriculum has not been proposed, the states have been given the freedom to decide the ways in which the syllabus can be adopted and linked to the curriculum.
The teachers, too, will benefit as a training module on yoga would be established for teacher education programmes this year onwards. The aim is to produce a pool of trained teachers in yoga to meet the growing demand for them by means of introducing a syllabus for teachers -diploma, bachelors and masters in yoga education.
A national level yoga competition with a prize worth Rs 5 lakh was also announced for school children, adding much excitement amongst them!
[“source-indiatoday.intoday”]
