Why do new schools prefer CBSE affiliation?

More and more new schools coming up in the state capital are seeking affiliation with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) instead of Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations.

Recently, Staford School was granted CBSE board affiliation. With this, the number of CBSE schools in the city has gone up to 115 against ICSE board schools, which are just 75 in number. Those that offer ISC (Class 12) exams are even fewer.

The statewide figures also indicates that against 2,200 CBSE schools in UP, there are only about 285 schools affiliated to ICSE board. Though it is as to which of these two boards is better, the fact remains new schools are seeking affiliation with CBSE board.

“CBSE has emerged as the preferred education board across the country amongst progressive private schools. Therefore, while earlier schools in Lucknow were either affiliated with the UP Board or the ICSE board, newer schools clearly prefer CBSE,” said director of Staford School, Ambrish Bansal

Excluding Kolkata and Mumbai, most metro and larger cities have negligible presence of CISCE schools. Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh and most state capitals other than Lucknow and Dehradun are almost entirely CBSE dominated. Why?

“This is perhaps because ICSE has a voluminous, rote learning centred curriculum, with heavy emphasis on getting keywords correct in the final examination. Memorising facts is irrelevant in the age of Google and Wikipedia,” said Hyderabad-based Prashant Bhattacharji, who runs an educational portal .

Career counsellor Amrita Dass said that a major reason for more schools seeking CBSE affiliation was that there was a general belief among parents that CBSE students had an advantage for various engineering and medical competitive exams that were conducted by CBSE. However, statistics over the last five years indicate that this is a misconception.

She said, “Another factor is that the standard of the compulsory paper of English is easier in the CBSE system.” However, she emphasised that what matters was the quality of all round education provided by the school and not the board that ultimately made a difference.

This is especially of significance as students passing through the CBSE system get preference in entrance in Delhi University. This year the Delhi University has received the maximum number of application from CBSE students, followed by the Rajasthan and Bihar state boards. Almost 75% of the total numbers of students who have applied to the university for admission in various undergraduate courses this year are from CBSE. This year, the university has received 2,91,817 applications for admission to its 54,000 undergraduate seats. “Of them, around 2,18,872 are from CBSE and 26,693 and 12,705 applications are from Rajasthan and Bihar respectively.

“The introduction of the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) scheme by the CBSE in 2009 has allowed students to learn beyond books,” said an academician who refused to be identified.

But Fr Denis Naresh Lobo, principal of the 130-year-old St Francis’ College has a different point of view. Fr Liobo said, “It is a fear psychosis among some of the parents who force the school administration to go for CBSE affiliation. They believe that CBSE is better for competitive exams since the board conducts some competitive exams. But the truth is the percentage of selection is more in ICSE than CBSE which they don’t know.”

FIGURES SAY THERE ARE 115 CBSE SCHOOLS IN THE CITY AGAINST 75 CISCE-AFFILIATED