Difference between CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE, IB and Montessori
I am not an expert in education, so please take what I share with a grain of salt. Here, I am sharing my findings based on my personal experience as a parent. Based on my experience, the thing that matters the most in a school are its teachers. Next comes the teaching methodology. Last comes the school infrastructure. The kid learns most from their teacher — a good teacher will teach well in any school. I am sure there are schools where on average, there are more good teachers than other schools and thus, choice of school does matter.
My son recently entered the first grade. He had gone to a Montessori school for kindergarten. For the first grade, initially, we enrolled him in a CBSE school close to our house. As part of school exploration, I got a chance to examine text books from almost all the boards. I found very little difference between these text books. Even CBSE text books, that I grew up studying, look very different today. The way the concepts are introduced in the books seems very logical. The exercises and problems suggested at the end of the chapter are very practical. IB and IGCSE text books seemed very similar. However, what we found with the CBSE school where we had sent our son was that the approach to teaching there was still similar to the approach that was used when I was a student. Even though the books and guidelines have evolved, some of the schools have still not evolved with them.
My son’s CBSE school had a teacher to student ratio of 1:30. There were separate teachers for each subject — they would come in to the class, teach their subject and leave. After 3 months in school, my son did not know the name of a single teacher. There was no personal connection or attention. There was simply broadcasting of information. Subjects were taught mostly in the form of rote learning, similar to how most of us might have grown up learning them. Don’t get me wrong — I am not against it. This method does work — it worked well for me and I believe most people from my generation. This school, like most schools today, did pay a lot of attention to sports and extracurriculars. 1/3rd of every day was reserved for non-academic activities. This school did not offer any homework to keep the load on kids low and allow them free time after school hours.
In the three months that my son went to this CBSE school, he could not settle there. He cried every morning before going to school. He would keep telling us that the school hours are too long and all he does in school is write until his hands hurt. He was not engaged at all. We tried to coach him that he is a big boy now and this is a part of growing up.
We talked to the teachers at his school. They told us that some kids do take time to settle down and our son seems to be one of them. We also talked to his teachers from the previous Montessori school. They told us that coming from Montessori, this school is a big shock for our son since he is used to personal attention and learning by doing rather than rote learning. In Montessori, kids are grouped together in small batches, of mixed age group. They are put together in something called as an Environment. Each environment typically has 2 or more teachers and less than 15 kids. While there is some classroom style teaching, kids spend more of their time learning by doing activities, either alone or in groups. Kids get to choose the activity as per their desire on a particular day. So, for example, one day, they may spend their time doing activities that teach math and on another day, they may spend time learning English. Concepts are taught by doing practicals first. For example, the concept of fractions is taught by using blocks of different shapes that are broken into smaller pieces. There is a lot of focus on language. There is also a lot of focus on real life lessons like keeping your place clean and tidy.
Our son’s daily crying eventually got the better of us and we decided to change his school. We explored other CBSE and ICSE schools and also explored schools that offer international boards like IB and IGCSE. We heard a lot from the teachers about the difference between these boards and these schools, but to be honest, it was all very confusing. We kept hearing the terms experiential learning, personalised attention and focus on extra curricular in almost every school that we visited. We were seriously confused if we should even consider changing his school at all.
Eventually, after a lot of deliberation and discussion with friends, we changed our son’s school and put him in an international school that followed a dual method of teaching which was a mix of ICSE and IGCSE. We did not really know what it means. However, our son was happy in this new school. He knew the names of his teachers. He would come home excited and tell us about his day.
This new school charges a huge fees — This allows them to afford a smaller student — teacher ratio. Each class has 3 teachers for about 25 students — they get personal attention. Teaching approach is different from Montessori, but also different from his previous CBSE school. Kids are introduced to seemingly difficult concepts but in a way that they will be used in real world. For example, just in first grade, they were asked to create a book, all the way from the cover page, table of content, illustrations and the entire story. I know what you are thinking. No, I did not create this book for him. My son created the entire book on his own, in the school. Once the book was ready, we and other parents were invited over to the school to come and check it out.
Just like other schools, this school is also teaching the kids words and their spellings. However, there is a twist. Instead of asking kids to simply spell certain words, they are given exercises where they have to think of and write 10 words that end in “ss” or start with “su”. For each word, they have to write a definition in their own language and they are free to use illustrations as part of that. Kids are not asked to describe photosynthesis, something that kids can memorise and repeat. Instead, they are asked to explain in their own words what would happen to a plant if it is kept in a dark room for several days.
Overall, we are relieved that our kid seems to have settled down. I am sure this is not the first bump that we had hit along the long journey of child education. I believe that the responsibility of inculcating good values and teaching how to handle emotions primarily falls on my wife and I as parents. Both my wife and I are working and have very busy life. We live with constant guilt of not giving enough time to our son. Changing school was easy. The real question is — can we do justice to the part that we, as parents need to play in our son’s education and growth.
