The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, which conducts the ISC exams, will completely overhaul its syllabus and align it with that of the CBSE. The reason: to prevent post Class 10 migration to the latter, which conducts the all-India engineering and medical entrance exams.
In 2015-2016 academic session, for every 300 students who cleared the ISC exams, 100 chose CBSE schools for their class 12 board exams. In 2014, as many as 1,49,087 students took the ISC exam but 7,7018 students opted out of the board the same year, resulting in only 72,069 candidates taking the ISC exam in 2016.
“In order to convince students and parents that the syllabus of ISC and CBSE class 12 is the same, we have realigned our Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology syllabus with that of the CBSE. We were compelled to bring about this change. It comes into effect this new academic session and the ISC exam of 2018 will be conducted in according to this changed syllabus. The question pattern too would follow the CBSE,” said Gerry Arathoon, chief executive and secretary of Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations.
The Council of Boards of School Education in India (CBSE), a voluntary association of all the Boards of School Education in India, has drawn up a common curriculum for all the Indian school boards. This is presently being followed by all the school boards, including the CBSE and the CISCE.
“17 school boards, including CISCE and CBSE, follow this curriculum, still parents and students feel that CBSE gives aspiring doctors and engineers an advantage over ISC. Now, our realigned curriculum and question pattern for all the four subjects in class 11 and 12 will match the CBSE curriculum unit by unit, chapter by chapter,” Arathoon said.
The council has also directed teachers to follow the NCERT text books in class, as is done by CBSE schools. “We have asked schools to follow the NCERT text books as reference in class, while teaching from the text books recommended by us. We have also urged publishers to slim down the textbooks. This is because students and parents have a feeling that in ISC they have to study more than they do in CBSE. We want the parents to understand that we champion stress-free joyful learning, so the text books will be slimed down soon,” Arathoon said.
