The syllabus aims at responding to the nationally felt need for educating the future citizens in the science and art of knowing and loving their environment, protecting it from further degradation and improving it for better and healthier living.

It highlights the need for securing sustainable development through judicious consumption of energy and natural resources so that the present generation does not take away the posterity's rights of living a good quality of life.

The syllabus intends to strengthen the man-nature relationship which values not just the prospects of human welfare and prosperity but the healthy survival of all life forms on earth with exploitation of, and cruelty to, none.

The syllabus helps the learners identify the potential health hazards in their physical surroundings and vocational domains. It also prepares them to find viable solutions to these problems through individual and community effort.

It is intended to make students aware of the different forms of pollution and their causes. The syllabus also includes viable measures for controlling pollution effectively.

The syllabus attempts to sensitize students about the propriety of treatment meted out to nature. For doing this, cultural traditions and indigenous practices - local, regional and national - have also been included along with the modern scientific and technological developments.

While taking up the environmental issues, due importance has been given to the local phenomena that would generate the awareness of environmental issues in concrete terms. In higher classes, however, regional, national and even global environment occurs to facilitate critical analysis, comparison and appropriate corrective action.

The syllabus attempts to fill the gaps existing in the present educational scenario by reorganizing and suitably supplementing the theory content with appropriate activity inn such a way that knowledge generates an intense awareness of the problems and issues and this results in effective individual and / or community action for improvement.

Despite the fact that the syllabus aims at providing compulsory environmental education at all levels of schooling, it has been ensured the actual learning load of the learners does not increase. At every stage, up to the secondary level, most of the existing contents of the related subjects, i.e. science and technology and social sciences, particularly geography, have been retained and appropriate activities, surveys and projects have suitably been adjusted with them. This will help generate among students genuine awareness of the problems and the requisite skills of solving them. At the higher secondary stage the contents of environmental education have been identified with the presumption that since up to the secondary stage all subjects are compulsory for all students, they can now comprehend the environmental concepts and issues and the impact of human activities on the environment. They are mature enough to participate in and execute projects and conduct investigative studies.

The transaction of the proposed syllabus would not require additional school hours for the students. At the primary level there will be no need for even disturbing the present time arrangements. At the upper primary and secondary levels, the time allocated for science and technology, social sciences and co-scholastic activities will be proportionately redistributed. At the higher secondary level, however, the proposed instruction time will have to be drawn from the total time allocated for the general foundation courses and co-scholastic activities I the first semester of each year. The project work proposed in the course may extend into the general institutional time set aside for general co-scholastic activities.

The subject is envisaged as a compulsory segment of the total educational plan of each class to be subjected to proper evaluation and examination at appropriate levels. The result of this evaluation is required to find a place on the mark sheets / certificates of the board examinations of classes X and XII. This will save the subject from being neglected in general. It will be treated at par with other subjects.

Most importantly, the syllabus of environmental education as proposed promises not to let the subject remain an inert body of academic knowledge, but convert it into a vehicle of proactive consciousness about the environment and the requisite operational skills to respond to the environment problems.