Govt to issue 'smart syllabus' for Classes 9 to 12

LAHORE:

Provincial Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat has announced that the Punjab Education Curriculum, Training and Assessment Authority (PECTAA) is expected to release a smart syllabus for students of Classes 9 to 12 on Saturday.

An Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP) is a revised version of curriculum in which topics, textbook exercises and less essential content are excluded or reduced for examinations. It identifies the learning areas that should receive priority while retaining essential concepts and subject knowledge.

The PECTAA had previously used the approach to specify deleted topics, exercise questions, examination pairing schemes and model papers. Its curriculum portal carries documents for Grade 9 and 11 for the last annual examinations.

The proposed extension covering all four secondary and higher secondary grades is important because their students are preparing for board examinations that influence their future educational opportunities.

In many institutions, teachers struggle to complete the courses in the academic calendar, while students increasingly depend on private tuition and examination notes to cover the material.