Entrepreneurship curriculum in Delhi to begin from April

NEW DELHI: Delhi government on Friday directed its Education Department to roll out the pilot project for Entrepreneurship Curriculum in classes IX-XII of government schools from April next year (2019).

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia has directed that basic training is conducted during summer vacations and subsequently, the Entrepreneurship Curriculum in all schools for Class IX to XII will be launched in the first week of July 2019.

"Director SCERT to set up a working group having faculties of SCERT or DIET, Principals or Teachers of DoE and external experts or practitioners. This group should be empowered to engage the services of other experts and pay the remunerations to them as per SCERT's norm," the government noted.

It added that SCERT Delhi will organize a conference in January 2019 where it should invite organizations and individuals, working in this area, to present their ideas of Entrepreneurship curriculum as per our recommended framework to the working group.

"Inform the public about the launch of the curriculum and invitation of ideas or models for SCERT's conference within a week. Give a dedicated email ID to receive the inputs and assign someone from the working group to compile the inputs. Based on the content developed by the working group, the pilot curriculum shall be rolled out from April 2019 onwards," the government noted in its order.

The curriculum will be based on a four-fold framework, which are inspiring, educate, involve, facilitate.

Through this curriculum, the effort would be to raise the aspiration and build the mindset for problem-solving and decision making among children. Emphasis would be on personality development, communication, planning, etc.

"Unemployment is one of the biggest problems being faced by our country. Every time when there is some job vacancy, even if at IV Grade, we see thousands of MBAs, Engineers even PhDs., apply for the post," said the education minister.

The Deputy Chief Minister said that the biggest question is where are the job providers? "I have seen entrepreneurship programmes being carried out at various levels in some universities and schools but they are treating entrepreneurship as a skill and not as a mindset. That is why, despite so many programmes at various levels, we have not been able to produce entrepreneurship mindset who will ultimately become job providers in the society. This is a big lacuna," Sisodia said.