[alephnerd]

It's only affecting 10th grade CBSE (NCERT), not ICSE or state board* exams, let alone competitive board exams like the JEE (Engineering) or NEET (Medicine).

It's still being taught in the NCERT books as well, but now in 12th grade instead of 10th grade.

The scarier thing should be the rewriting of the history section of CBSE.

* board is Indian English for curriculum

Also, on the hierarchy of Indian board exams:

Top - ICSE

Medium - some State Boards

Low - CBSE, some state boards

Board exams are orthogonal to college entrance exams in India.

For example, IIT and Engineering admissions are gated by the JEE, so students oftentimes bunk 10th-12th grade to study the JEE and try to get a D average in the Board exam (because there's only so much you can study).

Board exams do have value though for most average colleges though and some top tier non-Eng ones (eg. If I wanted to study Law at St Stephen's College, University of Delhi or Business at Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi - both programs that feed into the political and business elite of India).

The Indian system is confusing and weird and there is some reform within it to become much more similar to the American system, but that's a work in progress.

[screye]

> The scarier thing should be the rewriting of the history section of CBSE.

That is the one I am looking forward to. Indian history today is freedom struggle - mughal empire - freedom struggle - mughal empire - gandhi - nehru - akbar. Is all.

Indian history is long overdue for a huge revamp. We need more balanced views of the independence movement. We need greater exposure to non-Delhi kingdoms that shaped the major parts of the country. We need history of the period between 1947 - 2000.

World history needs to be taught from a non-western lens too. India needs to learn about the East & Africa, just as much as the west. This is especially valid because Indians have closer historic ties to South East Asia and diaspora in places like Guyana, the Caribbean and Africa. With the advent of population genomics, we must include findings about Sub-continental pre-history that are more scientific than the idle musings of some 18th century white guy.

PS: good summary of the Indian educational system. As you correctly pointed out, western intuitions about education do not transfer well to the Indian system.

[alephnerd]

I'm not sure NCERT will ever be able to teach about ethnic diversity within India correctly - it's too politically loaded. For example, I'm Pahari. According to NCERT, we're a Hindi speaking ethnic group, though our Pahari languages are completely indecipherable to Hindi speakers (Eg. Sadh khol lal nukke heghe. Chaiyda tenu?) and we are classified as a different language group from Hindi. Similar reductiveness is applied to the "Hindi Heartland" by removing the ethnolinguistic diversity of Central India (eg. Bihar historically wasn't Hindi speaking until the 1970s because of Hindi oriented literacy programs).

If it's bad enough for highly represented regions of India, imagine less well represented areas like the North East, the Ghats, etc.

The big issue is NCERT and most grade school Indian historical education takes a very "Delhi" centric view of Gupta-Small Kingdoms-Delhi Sultanate-Mughals-British-Independence, but this chronological ordering is true for only a subset of India. South Indian kingdoms (itself a problematic term), Indigenous movements, the entire ethnographic history of the Northeast and the Northwest, etc all get ignored. That said, this is a bipartisan problem - doesn't matter if it's INC, BJP, whatever who's in power.

Also, there is a dearth of qualified teachers for the CBSE curriculum.

[AmIDev]

When I was in school(2002-2012), the Maharashtra state board history education was Maharashtra centric, not delhi centric. Most of the history lessons revolved around the maratha empire, their enemies. Few years were dedicated to freedom struggle, world wars and ancient history.

Even then though, there was very little about even other kingdoms who ruled present day Maharashtra, so there is clear need of diversity in history education.

[joshuaissac]

> board is Indian English for curriculum

This sense of the word 'board' as in 'examination board' also exists in British English. The US also has the 'College Board' which sets some national exams.

[alephnerd]

Yep. But we call 'em "AP tests", "PSATs", or "SATs". The word "Exam" isn't commonly used in American English.

[whinenot]

>"Exam" isn't commonly used in American English.

Huh? Is this a homeschool trend? Final exams are the cornerstone of US secondary and tertiary education.

[lotsofpulp]

I grew up in ~6 different states in 9 schools in the US during the 1990s and 2000s, and we did not have final exams from Kindergarten through 12th grade, other than Advanced Placement (AP) exams.

You typically take tests at various points in time during the school year up to 12th grade, but entire course year tests labeled as "exams" did not happen until university, or AP exams if you took AP courses in high school.

Exam is definitely used in American English, though.

[kjs3]

I had final exams in the US, in 2 different states, in both public and private schools. I have 2 kids, and 16-odd neices and nephews in 5 states, from 2nd to 12th grade in both public and private schools. Everyone talked about final exams. I think they get 'officially' called other things; in my state they're called Milestone Assessments, but they sure sound like a final exam to me.

"Georgia Milestones is a single assessment system that consists of end-of-grade measures in English language arts and mathematics in grades 3-8, end-of-grade measures in science in grades 5 and 8, end-of-grade measure in social studies in grade 8, and end-of-course measures for specified high school courses."

[lotsofpulp]

Interesting. I did not go to school in Georgia, but various states in the Midwest and Northeast, and I do not recall any year end cumulative test. If I recall, we got a grade each quarter (or half) and then that was averaged for the final grade.

[alephnerd]

The word "exam" isn't really used in American English. Tests are definetly a thing in the US.

[dragonwriter]

> The word "exam" isn't really used in American English

Maybe there is some specific narrow regional or other dialect where this is true, but it is ludicrously wrong as a generalization of American English.

[yamtaddle]

Exam's used in American English, plenty. It tends to connote something a bit more serious or formal than a test, but I don't think you'd get much of a difference in reaction just using the two interchangeably, in most contexts. At worst, you'd come off a bit pretentious, using "exam" to describe lesser tests.

"Test" dominates in primary and secondary school, "exam" becoming more common in post-secondary education and for professional certifications et c., but both occur in both contexts.

[mrtranscendence]

I grew up in the Cincinnati area and spent a large portion of time in North Carolina. I now live in central Ohio. “Exam” is definitely a word that gets used wherever I’ve lived. Examples have already been brought up — final exams, AP exams, actuarial exams, comprehensive exams, etc.

[burnished]

Well, in the parts of the country I was educated in we had exams, and I would consider the word to be a normal part of people's vocabulary

[dragonwriter]

I hear “exam” all the time in American English, though “test” is perhaps slightly more common. The “T” in LSAT, SAT, PSAT, etc. is “test”, but they are “AP exams” [0], “bar exams”, etc., and both “test prep” and “exam prep” are commom terms for the industry that esiats to take money from people hoping for better scores on any of them.

[0] https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/ap-exams-overview

[alephnerd]

Interesting. For me at least, it's 70-30 test-exam.

Would love to see if there is a regional dialectic difference or maybe some kind of a language shift in the past 15-20 years.

[dllthomas]

I'm not sure there's actually a huge difference between "perhaps slightly more common" and "70-30" when operating from vague impressions like this.

[Arnavion]

>It's still being taught in the NCERT books as well, but now in 12th grade instead of 10th grade.

You're not required to take Chemistry and Biology after the 10th grade, so technically you could miss out on the periodic table and evolution still.

That said, I'm pretty sure I only learned the periodic table in 11th grade Chemistry class myself (15 years ago), so I guess it must've moved down to 10th grade at some point after that?

[alephnerd]

They're removing streams from the Indian education system. The NEP is making the Indian system much more American and will push for electives and classes instead.

So hypothetically, if I was targeting Medical, I could still take some classes in Commerce at the 10-12 level.

[Arnavion]

Oh, that's interesting. Thanks.

[Bekknqv]

The periodic table is actually already present in 9th grade textbooks.

[vkdelta]

Above ranking does not make sense at all. Is CBSE is so low ranked, why is prevalent board in Indian and schools abroad which favors CBSE?

ICSE is more all round syllabus which makes sense but does not make it difficult or higher ranked than CBSE.

[alephnerd]

I'm just speaking from a content perspective. I'm American born and raised, but often used Indian STEM textbooks to prep for STEM related AP exams as well as competition exams like USAPHo, AIMEs, etc in High School.

In my experience for STEM, JEE >>>> ICSE >> CBSE

All programs will accept the CBSE (it's exclusionary not to), but the CBSE curricula does lag.

Either way, for admissions here in the US, IB/AP+SAT would be preferred over ICSE or CBSE, and the kind of person targeting American undergraduate from India can afford to study IB+AP.

[thatloststudent]

Interesting that you rank some state boards as better than CBSE. Where I'm from (Karnataka), the state board textbooks felt like they weren't nearly as rigorous or interesting as the CBSE equivalents. Any particular state boards that you're referring to?

[vivegi]

There are also schools in India (mostly in the large metros) that directly offer the IB and Cambridge Assessments for high school. They follow the same international curriculum.

[alephnerd]

I mentioned that in my comment already.

> the kind of person targeting American undergraduate from India can afford to study IB+AP.