VISAKHAPATNAM: Amid the Andhra Pradesh government’s plans to convert all government schools to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) system by 2024, the focus has now shifted to affiliation guidelines and norms, and difference in syllabuses between the two boards.
Andhra Pradesh currently has only a few hundreds of CBSE schools compared to about 60,000 state schools.
The arduous task of fulfilling the CBSE norms and bye laws are those that discourage the state schools to seek CBSE affiliation. While the students of CBSE curriculum will have the flexibility of migrating to any part of the country, the state curriculum is tailor-made for the needs of the local students.
As per the existing affiliation bye laws of the CBSE, the school affiliated or seeking affiliation with the Board shall have an 8,000 square meters of land. For the schools located in cities with a population exceeding 15 lakhs, the land requirement will be a minimum 4000 square meters.
Secretary and Correspondent of Little Angels School at MVP Colony, Venu Mohan Manga, said the institute, which intends to obtain CBSE affiliation, needs to first get a no-objection from the education department in the prescribed format to forward it to the CBSE.
“Then an inspection committee will be constituted with a principal from the Kendriya Vidyalaya as the convener. One private school principal will be part of the committee as the member. The schools seeking affiliation must satisfy the conditions pertaining to classrooms, science, computer and mathematics laboratories, space for extracurricular activities, playground and other basic amenities like toilets, drinking water, etc.,” said Venu Mohan.
Venu Mohan further added that the inspection committee will look into various components such as physical infrastructure as well as teacher-pupil ratio, qualifications of teaching staff, defined roles and responsibilities, etc.
Narava Prakasa Rao, Convenor of Andhra Pradesh Right to Education Forum, opined that Andhra Pradesh can launch the CBSE system on a pilot basis in the major government schools in the first phase. “It will give a comprehensive insight into how the students and teachers are embracing or coping up with the new system. In this way, the shortcomings can be addressed before emulating the CBSE model in other schools,” said Prakasa Rao.
