The decision was taken during a meeting of the NCERT Executive Council and General Council.

Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar on Saturday said the performance of states in the field of education would now be assessed on 70 performance indicators creating a healthy competition among them to improve their performance. The decision was taken during a meeting of the NCERT Executive Council and General Council, which was also attended by state education ministers of Assam, Gujarat and Delhi, he said.

"All states will be assessed on those 70 parameters and graded on 1,000 score points. This will improve the quality and give the correct picture of where each state stands and there will be a fair competition to improve," Mr Javadekar told reporters.

He said it was also decided in the meeting to rationalise school curriculum by reducing it by 10 to 15 per cent this year in order to meet the target of 50 per cent by 2021.

"On curriculum rationalisation, it was decided that it will be reviewed to ensure a wholistic education in which there will be time for physical education, value education, life skills education and experiential learning. To do this, the curriculum overload needs to be reduced and that is why we have decided to reduce curriculum it by 50 per cent," he said.

"This year, there will be 10-15 per cent reduction. Next year it will be a little more. And we will achieve the target by 2021 so that time will be available for wholistic development of students," he added.

Mr Javadekar said the council had also decided to print more books in NCERT.

He said it printed just two crore books in a year two years ago which increased to six crore this year. He said it would rise to over eight crore books in the coming year.

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