The Hindu Business Line : CBSE initiatives and innovations

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is a national board of school education established in 1929 by a Government of India resolution. It is a self financing autonomous organisation and at present has more than 9,500 schools affiliated to it in India and in 20 countries abroad. The CBSE addresses a heterogeneous clientele that includes Government, Government-aided schools, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas and private independent schools. The object ives of setting up a national board were to fulfil the educational needs, requirements and aspirations of students whose parents were in transferable jobs and needed to move places often such as personnel employed with the defence or the banking sector.

The Board affiliates institutions for the purpose of conducting public examinations at the end of year 10 (age group 13-15) and year 12 (age group 15-18) with an attempt to bring about quality and excellence in school education. The Board also prescribes a curriculum largely derived from the NCERT national curriculum framework which is based on the most recent policies of the Government. In addition to the above, the Board also conducts professional entrance examinations for entry to professional courses at the tertiary level in the areas of engineering and medicine.

This is a great step forward in the direction of bringing uniformity, objectivity and reliability in the sphere of professional entrance examinations. The vision of the Board is to create centres of excellence in each school affiliated to the Board.

Academic Courses

At a secondary level, a student has to study compulsorily five subjects with two languages, mathematics, science and social science for external examination. Physical and health Education, art education and work education form compulsory subjects of school-based internal assessment. The Board offers 36 electives and 31 languages, including 11 foreign languages at senior school level, and a student needs to take five electives which include one compulsory language. There is also a provision to choose sixth additional subject. However, there is no streaming of subjects.

Even under the academic courses, responding to contemporary and futuristic needs in the new world order, the Board has introduced numerous new electives at senior secondary level in addition to the pure disciplines. Some of these are bio-technology, informatics practices, creative writing and translation studies, fine arts, entrepreneurship, agriculture, music, multimedia and Web technology, fashion studies, graphic design and heritage craft.

Vocational Courses

There are 31 vocational courses currently being offered. As an initiative to strengthen the vocational component, the CBSE has launched a pioneer competency-based course in Financial Market Management, in collaboration with industry for joint certification. The course aims at developing employable skills in financial markets, financial accounting, BPOs and computer application for financial organisations. CBSE has also introduced Healthcare Science and more courses are being identified. The Board is also taking due care to ensure vertical mobility for these options to provide a smooth transition to pursue higher education.

Promoting Quality

As a national board of education, with international jurisdiction, providing quality education as much as balancing equity with excellence remains the prime objective of CBSE. To achieve this, quality parameters are applied in appropriate areas such as: Curriculum design and content, teacher support system through empowerment, student support and guidance, diverse learning resources and infrastructure

Curricular Innovations

The Board has brought in various reforms through the decades to upgrade and enrich its curriculum. These include communicative approach to language learning to improve skills of communication in areas of reading, writing, listening and speaking, restructuring contents that focus on ‘hands-on’ activities and ‘learning by doing’ through practical skills in science.

Mathematics Laboratories have been introduced in schools for making teaching and learning interactive, participatory and fun through concrete materials, situations and hands-on experience from primary stages of schooling. Education on disaster management has been included as part of social science with emphasis on awareness and mitigation of man-made and natural disasters.

Health Programme

The Board has also launched a Comprehensive School Health Programme in which it has advised schools that they should set up health and wellness clubs, become a Health Promoting School and develop school canteens as socially responsible outlets. This programme envisages that each school will set up health and wellness clubs which will focus on holistic well being of children by acting as nodal centres for creating an enabling environment in the school.

CBSE has also produced four volumes of health manuals under its comprehensive school health programme. The six themes which the manuals deal with are — Knowing your body, food and nutrition, personal and environmental hygiene, physical fitness, being responsible and safe and behaviour and life skills.

Life Skills Education

Life skills education was introduced as an integral part of the curriculum of class VI in 2003. The schools were advised to adopt an inter-disciplinary approach for transacting the curriculum of life skills through formal modes of learning as well as through co-curricular activities. Life skills education is meant to empower learners to develop core life skills such as creative thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, self awareness, empathy, coping with stress, coping with emotions, interpersonal relationships and communication skills.

Thus learners would be able to develop a sense of self confidence, eco-sensitivity, gender-sensitivity and develop as competent citizens.

Adolescent education

It is an extension of ‘Life skills programme’ in secondary and senior secondary stages. The objectives are to develop value-enhanced life skills for coping and managing concerns of adolescence through co-curricular activities (CCA), to provide accurate knowledge to students about process of growing up, HIV/AIDS and substance abuse, to develop healthy attitudes and responsible behaviour towards process of growing up and to enable them to deal with gender stereotypes and prejudices.

CBSE has implemented continuous and comprehensive evaluation to access all three domains of personality i.e. affective, cognitive and psychomotor on a five point grading scale with no pass/fail criterion up to class V.

Exam Reforms

There are suggestions to take this up to Class VIII. Bag loads have been reduced and schools advised to follow policy of no homework up to class II and alternatives to home work from class III to make learning more joyful. Besides academic subjects, CCE covers other important co-scholastic such as games and sports, arts and craft, music and dance, personal and social traits and general knowledge and health and physical education and life skills education.

Concessions to physically-challenged and dyslexic students in the form of extra time, using a writer in the board exam and flexibility in subject choice at secondary level have been provided to ensure inclusive practices are practised both for teaching and testing.

counselling Programme

CBSE counselling is the ‘out-reach’ programme targeted at school children. For class X and XII examinees, CBSE started helpline programme for the first time in 1998 with the help of trained counsellors and principals from within CBSE affiliated government and private schools. It is a voluntary and free-of-cost service.

Over the years, CBSE is providing counselling through multiple modes to reduce psychological distress caused by personal or academic problems through IVRS, question and answer columns in leading national newspapers on weekly basis and online counselling and Web site interaction.

Girl Child Education

CBSE makes special provisions for encouraging girls’ education, especially single girl child. Scholarships have been provided to single girl child to pursue under graduate professional/ non-professional courses.

A single girl child scoring 60 per cent and above in class X is also awarded scholarship for pursuing further studies at the senior secondary level.

In order to bring specially-abled children to the mainstream, CBSE encourages schools to provide access and concessions to special students suffering from vision, speech and hearing impairments and dyslexia.

The professional competencies of principals and teachers are constantly upgraded by the Board by organising teacher workshops, orientation programmes and leadership training programmes. CBSE collaborates with leading business and management schools of the country to upgrade the skills and leadership qualities of school principals.

Sahodaya Schools

CBSE-affiliated schools form a voluntary association of independent schools for systemic renewal of academic skills. The schools are encouraged to share resources and establish curricular linkages. There are 200 Sahodaya schools clusters across the country with a network of 2,500 schools which enables them to become an outstanding example of community of practices. The regional and national-level Sahodaya conferences enable them to share the best practices.

Reaching Out

CBSE has introduced an interactive page in which all stakeholders can write in to the Chairman, CBSE, and expect a response to their query within 24 working hours.

The objective is to ensure effective and responsive administration. CBSE also makes interface with public at large that include schools, students, parents, national and international organisations though national conferences organised from time to time.

The Board maintains a transparent ‘single-window’ redressal system of genuine grievances. There is a well defined citizen charter and the Board provides access to information under the Right to Information Act and encourages accountability for good governance.

The online affiliation process devised by the Board has minimal manual interference and maximum transparency. The Central Board of Secondary Education as a pace setting organisation envisions a robust, vibrant and holistic school education that will engender excellence in every sphere of human endeavour. The Board is committed to provide quality education to promote intellectual, social and cultural vivacity among its learners.

The Board will work towards evolving a learning process and environment which will empower the future citizens to become global leaders in the emerging knowledge society.

(The author is currently Chairman and Secretary, CBSE)