New Delhi: Thousands of schools under the Bihar education board will follow the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) curriculum in Classes 11 and 12 from the new academic session as a step to improve education standards in the state.

The Bihar education department has already signed an agreement with the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) that is responsible for developing the CBSE courses.

"The state education department and NCERT have reached a written agreement. We have already handed them the soft copies of the syllabi," NCERT spokesman B.C. Patra told IANS. The new academic session begins in July.

"They have taken the syllabi only for Class 11 and Class 12. This will help the state board schools adopt the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) devised by the Human Resource Development Ministry," he said.

The NCF 2005 was prepared after months of deliberation among experts from the state education departments, NCERT, the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry and many independent educational luminaries.

The framework aims at improving school education and making it more interactive and student friendly. It works as a vision document for the school course curriculum that can reform and enrich studies at the school level.

Both NCERT and CBSE officials said that in view of the resource crunch, in terms of both skilled manpower and final resources, the decision seemed more practical.

"The senior secondary level is very important in the life of a student. Unless the education standard is high, it generally becomes difficult to compete with other students in colleges and universities," said a senior CBSE official.

"I am sure, adopting the CBSE syllabi will prove beneficial for students but the state government needs to focus on teachers' training," the official said, clarifying that this development will not bring the state board schools under the CBSE board.

Patra said that though the state education department had adopted the CBSE syllabi, it was free to change some portion of the curricula.

"They can change parts of literature, language and social science, but not arbitrarily. They have to submit the original transcript to NCERT, which will review it before accepting or rejecting it," he said.

NCERT authorities said a resource crunch and lack of enough qualified manpower to devise a standard school curriculum had already forced several other states - Haryana, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Goa - to adopt the CBSE course at the school level. IANS