Annual Report 2008-2009 8.5 The participants to the conference were Education Secretaries and Directors of School Education of various States/Union Territories, Directors of NCERT, NCTE, AICTE, CBSE, academicians and experts from the field of human rights education and representatives of civil society organizations. The senior officers of NHRC also participated in the conference. 8.6 Based on the deliberations held in all the technical sessions, the following recommendations / suggestions were made by the delegates of the conference:1. Human rights education should become an integral part of ‘right to education’. The inculcation of human rights values in the formative years paves the way for a society in which people have sensitivity and respect for dignity and rights of others. 2. There is a need to ensure that the integration of human rights education at the primary, middle, secondary and senior secondary levels in the school system should be carried out in a child-friendly and child-centric manner so that children of different age groups are gradually oriented to human rights education. It was suggested that the story-telling mode for human rights education could be used for primary and middle level school children. This would enable the students to have an overall understanding about human values, rights and duties while they are growing up. The National Curriculum Framework 2005 drawn up by the NCERT also lays emphasis on this aspect. 3. Currently, human rights education is not being taught as a separate subject in schools. The concepts relating to different human rights like dignity, equality, non-discrimination, freedom, tolerance, education, health, environment, sanitation, hygiene and cleanliness, protection of life and personal liberty, etc. are being taught through subjects like Social Studies, Civics, Sociology and Political Science in schools at the middle, secondary and senior secondary levels. It was thus recommended that there is a need to introduce human rights education as a separate discipline altogether in schools at the senior secondary level. 4. As there is no uniformity with regard to imparting of human rights education in schools, it was recommended that the schools across the country should have a universal syllabus for human rights education. For this purpose, there is a need to review and analyze the different syllabi, text books and other materials on human rights education including that of NCERT being used in schools at various levels. The said task could be carried out by key stakeholders like representatives of concerned ministries, departments, boards, technical institutions, NGOs, civil society organizations and experts working in the field. This would facilitate in planning and working out a national strategy for implementation of human rights education in the country. 5. While devising a national strategy for human rights education, it was felt that the integration of human rights education in the school system should not be limited to a mundane curriculum and its related textbooks alone. It should, in effect, go beyond the boundaries of the school system whereby children are given an opportunity to interact with others 108