6.b. Ultimate Understanding of Senior Secondary Education (Educational bodies)

Education in our country is being imparted by Government and Private Schools. Both, central as well as state governments run schools as per the following details:

Kendriya Vidyalaya:

Central Government runs these schools in the cities and towns.

Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya:

These schools are run in the villages.

Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas:

These schools are run for girls of Scheduled caste/ Scheduled tribes/ Other Backward class.

Army Public Schools:

Indian Army runs these schools for the children of army personnel.

Private schools:

These are of two types-

·       Government-aided

·       Schools running on their own resources

Fee in Government Schools is much less as compared to the Private schools. National Institute of Open Schooling (N I O S):

These schools offer education up to Senior Secondary level by open and Distance learning method. It is mainly meant for the people to continue their education who missed it for some reason or the other. States also run such State Institutes of Open Schooling.

At the class 12 level, the examination is conducted by the centralized bodies, detailed as follows:

Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)

·       The C B S E sets curriculum at the level of the classes 11 and 12.

·       Class 12 board examinations, conducted by CBSE are called All India Senior School Certificate Examination (A I S S C E).

·       C B S E is recognized by The Government of India.

·       C B S E syllabus comprises of textbook studies, assignments, work sheets and project work.

·       C B S E emphasizes upon logical reasoning and the applied education.

·       It focuses on the active learning in subjects like Mathematics and Science.

·       Both private as well as regular students can appear in their examinations.

·       Because of the affiliation of 20000+ schools in India and 200+ schools in 28 foreign countries with C B S E, students do not suffer in case of change of their location anywhere in the country or in some of the foreign countries.

·       C B S E supports both English and Hindi languages.

Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE)

·       CISCE conducts the following examinations at Grade 12 level:

§  The Indian School Certificate (ISC)

§  The Certificate in Vocational Education (CVE)

·       ISC examinations are almost at par with CBSE Class 12 examinations except English.

·       ISC is recognized globally.

·       ISC syllabus helps in building strong foundation even though it is bit more elaborate as compared to CBSE.

·       The students focus on balanced and active learning. 

·       The students get strong base of English and can adopt good career in English Language and Literature.

·       Only regular students of this board can appear for the ISC examination.

State Government Boards of Education

Except for the Union Territories, many states conduct examinations of Class 12 by their state education boards and are recognized by the Government of India.

Curriculum varies from state to state and is designed by the Department of Education of that particular state.

The students can write these examinations in English or their Regional languages.

The difficulty level of these examinations is less as compared to CBSE and ICSE examinations.

National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS)

The NIOS is run by the Ministry of Human Resource Development for those students who are generally home-schooled or have some gap in the education. It is not possible for them to take CBSE or ISC examinations.

It conducts the following examinations for class 12 in open or distance learning mode at the national level:

·       Senior Secondary Examination

·       Vocational Education

Islamic Madrasah

These are controlled by the State Governments or affiliated to Darul Uloom Deoband or Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama.  

Autonomous schools

Schools like Woodstock School, Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, Partha Bhawan and Anand Marga Gurukula are such autonomous schools which are permitted to set their curriculum and conduct their own examinations.

International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge International Examinations (CIB)

Some private schools have dual affiliations, one with the School education board of India and the other with International Baccalaureate (IB) or Cambridge International Examinations (CIB).

International schools

These schools conduct one of the following examinations at class 12 level-

·       International Baccalaureate,

·       Cambridge Senior Secondary Examination systems or

·       Under the school boards of their home nations (In case of the schools run by foreign embassies or the expat communities)

Special education

It runs integrated education programme for disabled children at class 12 level also.

Drafting of curriculum

National Council of Educational Research and Training (N C E R T)

This body makes the curriculum for school education at the national level. There are curriculum bodies at the state levels too.  

In the concluding article of this series we will explore curricula of different examination boards and other details.

The author has referred to the following websites for developing part of the content.

https://www.edsys.in/difference-between-cbse-icse-state-boards/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_India

#DetailsOfCBSEForSeniorSecondaryClasses #DetailsOfCBSEForClasses11And12 ##DetailsOfISCForSeniorSecondaryClasses #DetailsOfISCForClasses11And12 #InternationalBaccalaureate #CambridgeInternationalExaminations #NCERT

The author, R. C. Verma, hopes to have benefited the readers and looks forward to constructive suggestions in the under-given comment box or on the mail id: vermarajesh55@gmail.com or on Facebook.