Odisha government will soon integrate gender equality curriculum into the school syllabus for state government schools.
According to news reports, the gender equality syllabus will cover classes between six and 10 in over 18,000 elementary and 5,000 secondary schools by August.
As part of the initiative, the School Education Department has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-Pal), South Asia, and women’s rights organization Breakthrough in Bhubaneswar.
The module for the same will include interactive sessions for both boys and girls to discuss gender norms and discriminatory practices.
News reports also said that a similar curriculum was introduced by J-Pal in 314 schools in Haryana, and attitudinal shifts were evident with equitable behaviors among them.
“In Odisha, Breakthrough will work with the Department of School and Mass Education to contextualize and integrate the curriculum into the syllabus, train teachers and key departmental personnel, and conduct gender sensitization workshops with principals across 23,000 state-run schools. The program will also leverage the Digital Infrastructure for School Education (DIKSHA), the Government of India’s open-access education technology platform, to train teachers, receive feedback from them, and engage parents in the sensitization process as well,” news reports added.
