With the new session about to start in a couple of months and with new childrens ready to go to school, the parents must be sure what is right for their child! Every parent want their child to get a good education. So, the debate in every household begins with what is the right educational board for their child?
There are only two educational board that we have in our country leaving out the state boards – ICSE(Indian Council of Secondary Education) and CBSE(Central Board Of Secondary Education). Both these educational boards are very different regarding the academic sectors in India although the subjects taught in both the boards are same. Which Educational Board you should get your child in? Which one is better – ICSE or CBSE! We, here are going to layout some of the major differences between these two and leave it out to the parents to choose the best one for their child.
ICSE Educational Board
Indian Certificate of Secondary Education(ICSE) came into existence through the University Of Cambridge in India. ICSE is an examination conducted by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, which is a private and an all-english medium educational board in India. The syllabus of ICSE is vast and differs from CBSE in terms of its content and volume. There is an ICSE examination towards the end of tenth grade and an ISC examination towards the end of 12th grade. The syllabus followed by the ICSE board is more inclusive and complete when it comes to comprising all the fields with equal importance.
Subjects are taught only in English in ICSE and a candidate who is studying in an ICSE affiliated school can only appear for the examinations. Though ICSE is considered harder than CBSE or any other board in our country but the amount of knowledge an ICSE student gets is immense. Though the knowledge is immense but it may lay extensive burden on a child as he has to study around 13 subjects in sixth or seventh standard as compared to 7-8 subjects to be studied in CBSE.
ICSE is not recognised by the Indian government but is recognized all around the globe, mainly foreign universities and schools as compared to CBSE`s recognition only in the sub-continents. A career in English Literature or English language is more suited for an ICSE student. Students from management or humanities sections find the curriculum under the ICSE board more challenging and interesting with more knowledge being gained. The ICSE students till now had a disadvantage when it came to competitive examinations as the syllabus in those would be that of CBSE board and the ICSE students weren’t able to perform well due to that. But recently the Ministry of Education of India has stated that the competitive exams will now be conducted by a committee comprising of equal number of representatives from each educational board. So, the ICSE students are now no longer at a disadvantage.
CBSE Educational Board
Central Board of Secondary Education(CBSE) is the main educational board in India when it comes to school level education. This board of education conducts the All India Senior School Certificate Examination every year for the tenth and twelfth grade students.The CBSE syllabus is very easy as compared to all other boards including the state ones due to lesser number of subjects to be studied by the students and its compact structure. CBSE offers both Hindi and English medium as the medium of instructions as well as private students to give CBSE board examinations unlike ICSE.
Instead of studying Physics, Chemistry and Biology as separate subjects in ICSE board, here we have them all under Science as a sole subject and similarly History & Civics and Geography fall under the general umbrella of Social Science compared to two separate subjects in ICSE board. The students of CBSE do not have much practical knowledge as compared to those of ICSE due to its curriculum which focuses on application based. The subjects are approached in a theoretical manner and hardly any emphasis is giving to real-life concepts behind the science. The knowledge provided by CBSE board is limited only to the curriculum and does not go beyond it unlike ICSE where knowledge is beyond the curriculum. Students of CBSE have enjoyed their advantage when it comes to giving competitive examinations especially the IIT exams for undergraduate engineering admissions but they would no longer have that advantage from next year onwards.
Though both boards have an almost equal number of pros and cons, thus the choice of selecting which educational board their child should be admitted, solely depends on parents and their vision for the future of their child.