Everything which begins, once comes to an end. Same has taken place with the old syllabus issued by The Institute Of Company Secretaries Of India in 2017. ICSI has issued the final 2022 syllabus for the upcoming students in executive and professional. Since being a professional course it is very necessary to change the syllabus frequently as per the industry requirements and the new syllabus is slightly on the easier side for the upcoming students. Let us discuss about certain merits and demerits of the new syllabus.
Merits:
1- Easier for the upcoming students to pass the Module-1 and develop a sense of confidence amongst students. Since the current syllabus of CS Executive makes it very difficult for students to qualify Module-1 as large subjects like Company Law and Tax Law are given simultaneously in Module-1 whereas new syllabus teaches both the subjects in different modules.
2- CS Professional has now become easier for the upcoming students as the number of papers have been reduced to seven from nine in CS Professional out of which two papers are elective where a student can choose from a variety of subjects.
3- Availability of Labor Law as an elective subject for 100 marks in CS Professional. Since labor law is an exclusive area of Company Secretaries and its audit must be allowed only by Company Secretaries in future.
4- Practical teaching of Company Law subject at Executive level. The new syllabus of company law has a practical aspect and coverage instead of teaching completely theory as it is currently there.
Demerits:
1- Lack of Advance Tax Laws teaching at CS Professional level as it hampers the advance knowledge of Tax Laws in the upcoming Company Secretaries.
2- Mixture of Descriptive and Objective part in each subject as it prevents students from developing a single study pattern for a subject. In the current syllabus the MCQ subjects are completely different and Descriptive ones are completely different and students prepare a methodology of studying a particular subject in a particular way.
3- Financial Management is introduced in Module-1 instead of Module-2. Financial Management is a difficult subject for the CSEET passed students and as it is kept in module-1 it is going to create a fear factor in the minds of students.
4- GST is kept as an elective subject at professional level. The scope and coverage of GST is so wide that even a small scale businessman and shop owner can be a client and it widens the area of practice of Company Secretaries practicing in GST. It must be kept as a compulsory subject at Professional level
Critical Appreciation:
ICSI has taken a great initiative by introducing this new syllabus in favor of the students. Everything has pros and cons same is the case with the new syllabus of ICSI. This syllabus is going to improve the success rate in CS Executive Module-1 and students will gain confidence to continue the profession after getting success in the very first attempt. Also the level of difficulty and length of syllabus is reduced at the professional level so that students will not get stuck at any stage and will be able to clear the professional along with the 21 months compulsory training since the professional syllabus is flexible which allows students wo choose two elective
subjects according to their interest so it will develop a sense of urge to master those elective subjects. Introducing subjects like Labor Law is a great decision by ICSI. And overall this syllabus is a good step by ICSI and is better than the current one.
AUTHOR: JWALA SINGH
EMAIL: sjwala79@gmail.com
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