PIB Delhi – The syllabi and textbooks brought out by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) as a follow up of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), 2005 adequately integrates the legal education concerns from upper primary to senior secondary stages of school education. In addition, some of the supplementary materials prepared by NCERT also focus on legal literacy. In the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) affiliated schools, teaching of Social Sciences is compulsory till Class X, which, inter-alia, includes knowledge about the basic structure of the legislature, executive and judiciary, including the basic framework of the legal system, the ways laws are created in India and basic coverage of the Constitution of India and the rights it grants.
CBSE also offers an optional academic elective subject, namely, ‘Legal Studies’ in Classes XI and XII as fifth or sixth subject with any combination of subjects. Since, education is a subject in the Concurrent list of the Constitution and the majority of the schools are under the jurisdiction of State/Union Territory (UT) Governments, it is for the respective State/UT Government to impart the legal education in their schools. The information was given by the Minister of State for Education, Smt. Annpurna Devi in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.
