CHENNAI: Council
for Indian School Certificate Examination's (CISCE) announcement to change the
class 11 syllabus to bring ICSE at par with CBSE has become a point of concern
for ICSE schools. The schools have raised apprehensions that this measure could
dilute the ICSE curriculum, and make it less competent for students.
CISCE recently stated that
the two boards differ only in chapter sequence, and the Board wants to
standardize it. CISCE chief executive and secretary Gerry Arathoon said that
with modification of syllabus, the board also intends to redesign the class 11
exam pattern so as to empower students to handle competitive exams.
Vael's Billabong High
International School principal Meenakshi Ramesh begs to differ on this. She
said it isn't true that CBSE students are better equipped for competitive
examinations compared to ISE students.
She pointed out that ICSE and ISE are among
the toughest boards. They help students build their knowledge on a logical and
application based framework. Hence the students can tackle any exam with ease,
and any effort to dilute the curriculum for the sake of accommodating isn't
beneficial.
Other school heads have also
nodded in agreement to Meenakshi Ramesh. They said that quality must never be
compromised for syllabus revision. Especially in a state like Tamil Nadu,
quantity has always been the focus over quality, amongst most students. The
single window engineering system in the state has led to this marks-based
competition.
A lot of students post class
10 move to state board for simply getting good marks. The apprehension is that
such a compromised state of quality must not infiltrate in ICSE after the
modification of syllabus. There are 65 ICSE schools in Tamil Nadu and 26 of
them offer ISC (Classes 11 and 12).
Meena Rajan, principal of
Good Earth School was of the opinion that they are acceptable of the changes as
long as it doesn't affect the academic standards, and this has been
communicated to the Board. The students as well, are very much happy with the
existing syllabus.
Tags: Icse
Change In Icse Syllabus
Icse Vs Cbse
