SITAPUR TOPPERS AND FALL OF STATE BOARDS IN INDIA
Recent announcement of state board results in Uttar Pradesh sparked more than just academic curiosity. The toppers from Class X and XII were from two Sitapur schools. A total of 159 Class X students scored top 10 positions — sharing ranks due to identical marks — almost all of them from small towns like Amroha, Fatehpur, Mahoba, Deoria and Chitrakoot.
A notable absence loomed large. Not a single student hailed from the capital city of Lucknow. Similarly, none from big towns of Kanpur, Allahabad or Varanasi.
The results are, however, not a comment on the academic merit of Lucknow schools, but an exodus of the prominent ones from the state board to “greener” pastures, namely Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Indian Council of School Education (ICSE) affiliations.
This has turned the spotlight toward a trend that extends far beyond the boundaries of Lucknow. A similar migration towards central boards has been unfolding across state capitals and other cities (in UP, also Kanpur, Varanasi and Prayagraj) even as top schools in metro cities like Mumbai and Delhi move towards IB (International Baccalaureate) and CAIE (Cambridge Education International).
Schools & parents want it
UP state education board is India’s largest board, with 55.3 lakh students registered for the 2024 academic year. However, none of the prominent schools in Lucknow is affiliated with it anymore.
Once proud bastions of the board, institutions like Montfort College (erstwhile Mahanagar Boys College), City Montessori School, Carmel Convent, and St Joseph College now adorn themselves with new banners, having exchanged their traditional affiliations for the national boards.
The reasons behind this departure and its implications are as diverse as they are compelling. President of Unaided Private School Association Anil Agarwal explains: “Prominent schools have switched to national or international affiliations due archaic policies of state boards. To run a school, an owner needs a comfortable and smooth process to acquire affiliations or school-related permissions, but in case of state boards, every step requires too much paperwork. In UP, state board schools cannot increase fees, and as a result, on-campus facilities, and infrastructure cannot be developed to meet students’ needs. So, parents don’t prefer to enrol their wards in such schools.”
Founder manager of Lucknow Public School and Colleges SP Singh said, “Back in 1983, we opened our first branch and that was affiliated to UP board. Thereafter, all branches that we opened in the 90s had ISC or CBSE affiliation. At present, we have 13 branches, and only the first one in Rajajipuram has a state board affiliation.”
He added, “There was a time when the UP board syllabus was considered the toughest and the best, but the perception has changed. There is no major difference between CBSE and UP board syllabus, but parents prefer the central boards.”
This sentiment finds wide echo. VP Tripathi, principal of Prayagraj’s Saraswati Vidya Mandir Madhav Gyan Kendra, Naini, said, “From 1992 to 2022, our school was affiliated to the UP board but we switched to CBSE to meet the craze for English-medium schools.”
There is also the “keeping up” factor. A senior teacher at Montfort College said, “We decided to change our affiliation to the CBSE board in students’ interest. All national-level examinations — be it medical, engineering or others — are based on CBSE syllabus, which is primarily built using NCERT books. Hence, for the better future of our students, we got a CBSE affiliation in 2015. Also, in those days, state board marksheets were not seen kindly in other parts of the country. Uniformity in marksheets at the national level too was a key reason.”
... And metros go global
In Maharashtra, whose state board too is one of the prominent ones in the country, schools have been migrating away from it for years.
In 2018, recognising the demand for non-state board schools, Mumbai’s civic body, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), announced it will set up one CBSE and one ICSE board school. BMC now has 18 non-state board schools, including IB and International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) boards, and five more are likely to come up in the upcoming academic year. The response to these schools has been overwhelming, with 868 seats receiving over 4,000 applications for the academic year 2023-24.
“The demand for national and international board schools is huge. Parents feel that their children will get a level-playing field if they study at non-state board schools,” said Rajendra Pradhan, president of the 85-year-old DS High School at Sion, Mumbai. The school is in the process of transitioning from the state board to ICSE and will welcome the first batch in the 2024-25 academic year.
According to Pradhan, an important factor behind the migration is economics. “Changing to other boards allows schools to revise their fee structure, which helps institutes like ours to stay afloat.”
According to Maharashtra govt norms, schools, even non-state board ones, cannot revise their fees beyond 7.5% each year. “We charge Rs 25,000 per year for state board students, but when we shift to ICSE, we plan to charge Rs 30,000 for Class I, and parents would not mind,” said Pradhan.
New learning paths
Principal of a school based in Mumbai’s Dadar that switched to CBSE five years ago said the curriculum is more experiential and allows students to learn beyond syllabus.
In Delhi-NCR, several leading schools have adopted international curriculums in line with aspirations of parents keen on seeing their kids educated on a par with the global standard.
Amity International was among the first chain of schools to introduce international boards alongside CBSE affiliation. Amita Chauhan, chairperson of Amity International Schools, said, “Some of our CBSE students are now pursuing further studies at Harvard and MIT. But we introduced the International Baccalaureate to provide an alternative for students who may want a tailored approach with diverse abilities.”
“Their classes are smaller, allowing for customised worksheets based on each child’s abilities. This flexibility is a major advantage. However, I’ve observed that CBSE has also evolved in the last five to six years,” she added.
The advantage of having one chain of schools offering multiple boards lies in facilitating experimentation with various pedagogical approaches. “In our CBSE schools, while maintaining our core values, we do integrate elements of the IB curriculum. Teachers engage in interactive workshops, enabling us to offer the best to our students,” she explained.
But not all parents see an advantage in a national or an international board. Ritika Sharma, a parent from Chembur in Mumbai, who sends her daughter to a state board school, felt students in non-state board schools are overburdened and that leaves them with no time for sports and hobbies.
“I enrolled my daughter at a state board school against the wishes of my husband who thought I was making a big mistake and deliberately putting our daughter on the slow track. But I was adamant as I have seen my brother’s kids, who study at non-state board schools, being saddled with so much schoolwork that they get barely any time for sports or hobbies. International boards are designed to be competitive, and I didn’t want my daughter to grow up in such an environment,” said Sharma.