More schools shifting away from state board

MUMBAI: Several schools in the city are nowadays shifting from the state board to other national and international boards as the latter harp upon the practical and experimental aspects of learning instead of relying just upon rote learning.

Parents feel that international boards have more flexibility and are more comprehensive.

Fr Francis Swamy, joint secretary of Archdiocesan Board of Education (ABE) and former member of the state board feels the curriculum of the state board is only about learning and reproducing. “We need more application-based concepts which will compel students to think and reflect.

“The curriculum of ICSE and CBSE gives that to the students as they mostly deal with practical and experimental learning that equips students.” According to him, if the parents are now going for other boards apart from the state board, they have strong reasons to do so.

Radhika Maharhishi, a parent and senior teacher at a Mumbai-based school, said, “Though I come from a state board school, I have admitted my daughter to an ICSE school as it focuses on all subjects and it gives students more options to select different subjects. They offer more than 20 Indian languages and 12 foreign languages as language subjects. Unlike the state board, there in ICSE board, the student has the freedom to decide what subject he wants and what subject he would like to omit or put as an optional subject,” she said.