New Delhi: The Parliament was informed by the Ministry of Education on Monday that the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) recently removed a manual titled, ‘Inclusion of Transgender Children in School Education: Concerns and Roadmaps’, as it had to pass through various stages ahead of the release, reported Hindustan Times.
“It is an academic exercise which has to undergo various stages before it is made a public document and is used for training by different stakeholders,” Minister of State Education Annpurna Devi said in the Lok Sabha via a written reply sought by Congress parliamentarian Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
“NCERT has been training teachers, teacher educators and school heads on gender sensitization with an all-inclusive approach. The concerns related to transgender children are addressed in different textual and training materials/manuals/modules,” she added.
Acting on a request by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the NCERT dropped the teachers’ training manual on the integration of transgender or gender non-conforming students in schools from the latter’s website on November 6.
According to NCPCR Chairperson, Priyank Kanoongo, the text of the manual will expose children to “unnecessary psychological trauma” and the idea of removing binaries will supposedly contradict the idea of creating an inclusive environment, stated the HT report.
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