New Delhi, March 11 -- The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has slashed the Class 9 English syllabus, reducing the number of textbooks from two to one, and the number of texts from 29 to 16.

The new Class 9 English textbook opens with a story taken from a 2004 book 'How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories' by Rajya Sabha MP and author Sudha Murthy.

It also includes texts by celebrated Indian writers such as Subramania Bharati and Rabindranath Tagore, and lesser-known foreign poets such as Bryanna T Perkins, Irene Chua and Robert Langley. Of the 29 texts across the two previous textbooks, 28 have been replaced in the new book.

OnlyO Henry's short story "The Last Leaf" makes an appearance in the...