Review of Single National Curriculum with Perspective of the Education of Children with Visual Impairment at Primary Level in Punjab Pakistan

Abstract

Purpose: The Single National Curriculum (SNC) is one of the basic items of manifesto of ruling party in Pakistan. The academic capability of Children with Visual Impairment (CWVI) is usually considered as that of non-disabled students due to their good cognitive skills. Directorate of Special Education Punjab adopted the same curriculum for CWVI. This study is an effort to identify the standards, benchmarks and SLOs which are difficult to accomplish for CWVI. It was a qualitative study by method and curriculum review/document analysis technique was applied to study the SNC. The complete curriculum of seven key learning areas at early childhood level and following six subjects of English, Urdu, Mathematics, General Knowledge, Islamiat and General Science were studied at primary level. The data was retrieved from the website of National Curriculum Council, Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, Islamabad, Government of Pakistan. Collected information was coded, major themes were derived and interpreted. Results revealed that a large number of standards, benchmarks and Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) were easy to accomplish for CWVI as non-disabled children but many standards, benchmarks and SLOs were not easy to accomplish for CWVI due to their visual limitations and lack of sufficient need based support. The study recommended that proper adaptations, modifications and accommodations should be made for CWVI especially to attain the geometry, science and geography related standards, benchmarks and SLOs including adaptations proposed by Directorate of Special Education Punjab. Pictorial representations and visual tasks should be substituted with some other learning tasks for CWVI.

Exploring Head Teacher’s Perspectives Regarding the Execution of the Single National Curriculum (SNC) in Public Primary Schools

“…There is a noticeable gap between the pupils who attend these schools because of the significant disparities in the education that these three systems offer. The establishment of the SNC aimed to close the disparity that exists in the middle of the three different kinds of systems (Jahanzaib et al, 2021).…”

Interplay Between Parent-Teacher Collaboration and Academic Performance of Pupils With Learning Disabilities in Public Primary Schools in Migori County, Kenya

“…The study showed there was a significant value of parent participation in the learning of children with and without disabilities. In India, Jahanzaib and Fatima (2023) examined parental involvement among children with or without disability. The results also indicated that the parents of children with learning disability got involved in their immediate learning environment rather than the general school environment.…”

Exploring Sustainable Development Goals and Moral Values in the Oxford Social Studies Textbooks for Primary Classes

“…Document analysis is beneficial as it would enable researchers to organize or categorize non-numerical detailed data (Longo, 2019). The content of Oxford's social studies textbooks for the Primary classes from grades 1 to 5 was critically analyzed by using the document analysis technique and the reason behind the selection of Oxford textbooks is that they are developed on basis of the National Curriculum of Pakistan (Jahanzaib et al, 2021). Documents are a source of data or information while content analysis is used to analyze the contents of documents appropriately.…”