CBSE versus ICSE

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself, they say. Giving the best education to their children is each and every parent’s wish as it means giving life to them. So when it comes to admitting one’s ward in a school, one is often confused in choosing the best board among the plethora of boards available in the country.  And when it comes to zeroing down the boards, only two popular boards always come to one’s mind, i.e. either Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) or Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE).

To help clear the confusion in parents’ minds, fruitful information can be given through a comparison between them in terms of their merits and demerits. Before starting the comparison, it would be a good idea to know about the boards:

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in India is the main board for school level education in India. Apart from preparing syllabi of different classes, the CBSE also conducts two all India level examinations namely-All India Secondary School Examination, AISSE (Class X) and the All India Senior School Certificate Examination, AISSCE (Class XII). CBSE is committed to equity and excellence in education.

The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) is also one of the popular boards of India. This board conducts three examinations-an ICSE examination towards the end of Class X and an Indian School Certificate (ISC) examination for XII standard students and Certificate of Vocational Educational (CVE) for class XII. Its mission is to serve the nation's children, through high quality educational endeavours, empowering them to contribute towards a humane, just and pluralistic society, promoting introspective living, by creating exciting learning opportunities, with a commitment to excellence.

Both the exams, specifically twelfth grade, conducted by these two boards serve as the basis for students to pursue their higher education in and across the globe.

The following are the comparison between CBSE and ICSE:

1.    Medium of Instruction:CBSE allows both English and Hindi as the medium of instruction as its jurisdiction is extensive and stretches beyond geographical boundaries while ICSE allows only English as its medium of instruction. ICSE exams have been designed to provide an examination in a course of general education, in accordance with the recommendations of the New Education Policy 1986, through the medium of English.

2.    Nature of Board:CBSE is a board of education under Indian government. In 1921, the first education board in India was set up, namely, Uttar Pradesh Board of High School and Intermediate Education, under the jurisdiction of Rajputana, Central India and Gwalior. The Indian government in 1929 set up a joint board named "Board of High School and Intermediate Education, Rajputana". This included Ajmer, Merwara, Central India and Gwalior.Later it was confined to Ajmer, Bhopal and Vindhya Pradesh. In 1962, it became the Central Board of Secondary Education, CBSE.

While ICSE is a private board and it is registered as a Society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations was established by the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate in 1958 to cater to the educational needs of the nation.

3.    Eligibility: CBSE approves both regular and private candidates to sit for its exams namely-AISSE (Class X) and AISSCE (Class XII) while ICSE allows only those candidates who are admitted to ICSE affiliated schools to appear in all its examinations – ICSE (Class X), ISC (Class XII) and CVE (Class XII).

4.    Evaluation of students’ performance:Since its inception, ICSE has been stressing on internal assessment as a vital factor for students’ overall score. Emphasis is laid on practical tests and assignments. ICSE affiliated schools are required to have labs for math, science, computers etc.  The marks of these tests and assignments are aggregated with the overall scores of the student.

However,CBSE has recently started conducting formative and summative assessment for its students through CCE- Continuous & Comprehensive Evaluation. The weightage of two formative and one summative assessment in each term in a year will be 40% and 60%, respectively. The CCE scheme means a school-based evaluation of students that includes every aspect of a student’s overall development and performance. The scheme includes regular assessments, frequent unit tests, analysis of learning gaps, applying corrective measures, conducting retests and at the end, giving feedback to students as well as teachers for their self-evaluation. It also covers both the scholastic and the co-scholastic aspects of a student’s growth. In scholastic approach, books prescribed by NCERT and other renowned authors are studied for every subjects while in co-scholastic, life skills such as creative thinking, analytical thinking, effective communication, decision making etc. are developed through various activities.

5.    Examination nature: CBSE has made class X board examination optional wherein students have the option if he or she will write the exam or otherwise be graded. Assessment is conducted at the school level based on all-round performance through the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) which focuses on other life skills, attitudes, values, sports et alapart from pure academics.While ICSE has not made its class X examination optional yet. However, class XII board exam is not optional in either of the boards.

6.    Grade System: CBSE students of class IX and X are evaluated on a 9-point grading system namely A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, D, E1 and E2, A1 being the highest and E2 the lowest. Each grade is based on both formative and summative assessments. The step is regarded as a progressive move. The assessment shall be made on a five point scale i.e. A,B,C,D and E for subjects of internal examination in Class X.

In ICSE, the grading system ranges from 1 to 9, 1 being the highest and 9 the lowest. In Socially Useful Productive Work and Community Service which is internally assessed,the assessment shall be made by grades A, B, C, D or E.

7.    Qualifying marks: In CBSE, the pass mark of each subject is 33%. But in a subject involving practical work, a student must secure 33% marks in the theory and 33% marks in the practical separately in addition to 33% marks in aggregate so as to pass in that particular subject. While in ICSE, 35% and 40% are the pass marks for class X and XII respectively.

8.    Subjects offered:Compared to CBSE, ICSE provides a lot of more subjects to choose from. In ICSE, some of the subjects which students can opt for are Environmental Education, Computer Applications, Technical Drawing Applications, Visual Art, Yoga and other performing arts including Drama, Indian Music, Western Music, Indian Dance; and Personal, Social and Health Education. However, with the change in its pattern, CBSE too have introduced several new subjects to opt for such as Mass Media, Music, Environmental Studies and Carpentry et al.

9.    Teaching methodology: The teaching pattern has undergone significant change over the years, both CBSE and ICSE has been focussing on learning through experience and experimentation rather than through one-way teaching. Interactivity between the teachers and students has increased with the change in the teaching methodology.

10.  Monitoring:CBSE aims at regularly updating the pedagogical skills of the teachers and administrators by holding in service training programmes, workshops etc. While ICSE believes in minimum interference and allows schools to evolve own niche-progressive institution. The ICSE affiliated schools have freedom to experiment with new ideas and practices.

11.  Recognition:Most of the Indian universities recognise both CBSE and ICSE. Nevertheless, some colleges are into the process of calibration of marks wherein they put an adjustment factor for marks obtained in one board to make it equivalent or comparable to the other, though it varies from time to time. Colleges often prefer the board from which maximum students have come from. In such case, CBSE is more preferable. For instance, Delhi University (DU) colleges often prefer CBSE students to ICSE ones. Nevertheless, getting admission to DU is as tough for CBSE students as it is for its ICSE counterparts since it’s the game of unreasonable cut-offs.

12.  Higher Education:However, there are universities that give equal weightage to every student regardless of their boards they have come from. ApeejayStya University (ASU) is a perfect example of such universities without any partiality to students of different boards such as CBSE, ICSE or any state boards. Unlike other universities, ASU believes in value-based holistic education, focussing on acquiring thinking skills and learning how to learn for life for its students regardless from which boards they have done their schooling from.

Late Dr.Stya Paul, Founder Chancellor, ApeejayStya University, said: “ASU is a seat of global learning that would bring transformation of society through value-based holistic education, man-making and nation building.”

13.  Accessibility: CBSE affiliated schools are easily accessible. One can find new schools in any area, city, town even abroad without much hassle because of it wide prevalence. While finding ICSE affiliated schools in any area is cumbersome.

14.  Reach:Talking about the spread of the boards, CBSE is more popular between the two as it has almost 9000 schools spread across India and abroad. This factor helps when one wants to move from India to other countries like Europe countries, Middle East among others.With almost 2000 schools, ICSE has its presence in India, Indonesia, Singapore and the UAE.

15.  New plans: CBSE is planning to start ‘Problem Solving Assessment’ (CBSE- PSA) for students of Classes IX and XI from the second term of session 2012-13. It will replace the existing pen-paper test in the Formative Assessment (FA). Unlike FA which is conducted by schools, PSA would be conducted and evaluated by the CBSE itself. It would be a 90-minute test which will comprise questions from Mathematics and English, it will not have anything from textbooks. Besides, CBSE has formulated an internationally benchmarked global curriculum, the CBSE-I, that focuses on enquiry and skilled based curriculum, analysis and discovery approach and on real world experience thereby catering to individual learning styles.

Recently, ICSE announced plans fora centralised marking scheme so that students have a clear understanding of their evaluation system. Also, it is implementing e-registration or online registration of the students for the board examinations. Besides, Environmental studies will be merged with other subjects from 2013.

Looking at the comparison above, it can be noted that there are schools like Apeejay Schools in various cities of India that have been focussing on developing various life skills of students throughformative and summative assessment since its inception 45 years ago. Apeejay Schools are run under the aegis of Apeejay Education Society which is committed to quality education of global dimensions leading to man-making and nation building. ApeejayStya University (ASU), which is a temple of higher education, provides supportive environ wherein there is no bias of any kind specially in treating students regardless of their background and educational board viz CBSE, ICSE, IB, GCSE, State Boards and the likes of. Unlike other universities such as Delhi University which is impartial to students coming from different boards, ASU believes in providing equal opportunity to everyone.

Mrs.SushmaBerlia, Chancellor, ApeejayStya University, says: “The ApeejayStya University is yet another milestone in our unending journey in pursuit of excellence – the culmination of a long-standing dream to establish a seat of global learning that reflects the best practices of the leading universities of the world. One that would set the standard for quality and innovation in higher education, in the teaching-learning of technology, liberal arts and research in the country, and would give to the world men and women who would be able to transverse their educational destinies in a supportive and nurturing environ that cherishes the independence of thought, creativity, academic autonomy, risk-taking, diversity and multiculturalism.”

From the above, it can be concluded that both CBSE and ICSE give quality education though both have their own pros and cons. Nevertheless, choosing a board for one’s children entirely depends on what kind of education and future one desires for one’s children.  Keeping in mind the various educational boards and institutes available in India, one can deduce from the above comparison and from one’s own experience as they say that education is an ever progressive discovery of our own ignorance.