N. Kirubakaran, J.

"The children are neither weight lifters nor school bags are loaded containers".

1. Joy, happiness, enthusiasm, trolling, rolling, kicking, running, fighting, playing with other children are natural qualities of the children. Children are moulded as memory chips to store information’s, due to faulty pattern of educational system and to download them in the examinations to prove their memory capacity which is the yardstick to assess and measure the alleged merits of the children. Bundle of joy and enthusiasm, emotions, curiosity make the innocence of a child. The said innocence of the child is being robbed of by "ambitious" parents, "taskmaster" teachers and "result oriented" school managements by prescribing irrelevant books in the very young age itself. Instead of learning with joy, the children end up rot memorizing, with fear and stress, which in no way could help the children or the parents. Instead of making creative minds, the system only does destruction of younger minds.

2. Mr. M. Purushothaman, petitioner herein is a practising advocate before this Court, who filed the writ petition, challenging the circular issued by the CBSE, dated 29.07.2017 and further direct the respondents viz., Department of School Education and Literacy Human Resource Development Ministry, Government of India; National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to require the CBSE schools to buy books published by NCERT alone and not the books published by private publishers. He contended in the writ petition that,

(i) Excess subjects, not prescribed by NCERT, are prescribed by CBSE schools to children of Classes I to V;

(ii) Homeworks, which have been prohibited to be given to students of Classes I and II, is given and

(iii) Prescription of excess subjects make the school bags heavier.

This Court after hearing the arguments directed the respondents to consider the petitioner's representation dated 26.07.2017 and pass appropriate orders on merits and in accordance with law, within a period of four weeks from the date of receipt of a copy of the order, however kept the writ petition pending for issuing further directions in the matter.

3. While so, the present W.M.P. has been taken out by the petitioner/party-in-person to prohibit the CBSE schools from giving homeworks to children of classes I and II and protect the childhood of the tender kids from being excessively trained by giving homeworks by schools. The petitioner would contend that NCERT prescribed only a few subjects to the children, according to the classes, whereas the CBSE schools are prescribing and teaching children non-prescribed subjects and making the school bags heavy. There cannot be any homework for children studying in classes I and II, as per NCERT guidelines, whereas CBSE schools are compulsorily giving homeworks. Therefore, he seeks direction to prohibit the CBSE schools from prescribing any homework for the class I and II students.

4. Mr. G. Nagaraj, learned counsel appearing for the 3rd respondent would submit that CBSE has issued circulars to buy only NCERT books. NCERT is the academic authority to lay down curriculum and evaluation procedures for elementary education for classes I to VIII and schools have been advised strictly to follow the curriculum and the books prescribed by NCERT.

5. Mr. Karthikeyan, learned Assistant Solicitor General would submit that the National Curriculum Framework 2005 (NCF - 2005), brought out by NCERT is the latest curriculum documents, which guides the school education in the country. As per the NCF 2005, there is no homework upto class II and two hours a week from class III. The curriculum developed by NCERT is to reduce the syllabus level and to provide opportunity for children to learn through experimental learning rather than rot memorizing. NCF - 2005, prescribes only two subjects viz., language and Mathematics for classes I and II and three subjects viz., language, EVS and Mathematics for classes III