Then there is a category of schools that are better than these two. Many State Governments have two boards for governing school education. One is the State Board of education and another is Matriculation Board of education. The Matriculation Board curriculum is considered of higher standards than the State Board curriculum. Many private schools opt for Matriculation Board. But these private schools charge fees for students. Most of them offer education through English medium. The private schools charges fees according to their infrastructure and other extra-curricular activities they present. The better the infrastructure, the fees proportionately goes up. Generally, these parents are educated and value English medium education, for that is the key for higher education and employment in urban areas.
The elite school are governed by Central Education Boards like CBSE (Central Board for Secondary Education) or ICSE..etc. Many students who qualify for elite institutions like IITs, AIIMS, IIMs come from these schools. The language for instruction is English and second language is most likely Hindi.
The educated do not try to bring reform in education system but send their children to private institutions. And they like to protect status quo so that their children do not face fierce competition. But, their attitude leaves a majority of children with their talents undeveloped. That leads to more poor in the country.
Discriminated
The selection of a school for children itself is rejection of certain professions or careers. For example, a child entering a village school could never aspire for entering IITs. A child enrolled in Municipal School can never aspire to enter AIIMS. The future of children is clearly determined when they are below ten years old, that too arbitrarily. The reasons are obvious: no teaching, no motivation, lack of English language skills…etc.
Single board of education
There is a need to break the hierarchy and make the school education affordable, accessible for all children of the nation; irrespective of their caste, village or city environment, economic levels, …etc. If that has to happen, there is a need to make the school curriculum uniform throughout the nation.
In the 10 plus 2 system, students in Kerala need not have second language as compulsory in their eleventh and twelfth class. Whereas, it is compulsory for students in the State of Tamil Nadu. A student studying only five subjects would have opportunity to score better marks than a student studying six subjects at the same level. The average marks scored by students who study only five subjects would be better than the average marks scored by students who study six subjects. So, this will put students from one State in a position of advantage and students of another State would be in disadvantage position. It would be wise to have uniform curriculum throughout the nation.
Regional bias in curriculum?
One of the objections for not having uniform curriculum is that, there would be regional bias in the curriculum. The history, social issues, culture will vary from State to State. This is a genuine concern. To address this, the curriculum should be flexible to accommodate regional aspirations. That means, the social sciences could be designed by the State Government while other subjects could be designed by Central Government.
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