If things go as planned, Delhi might soon have its own education board that will not be a replacement for the CBSE but a next generation board to help students prepare for entrance examinations like JEE and NEET, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said.
The Delhi government envisions the board to be the answer to the current situation where students prepare for board examinations with the help of schools but have to take the help of coaching centres to clear their engineering and medical entrance exams, he said.
"This is an irony but I see it as a blessing that there is no education board in Delhi. We are preparing to give Delhi its own education board.
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"We thought about this in 2015 itself and even started working towards it. However, when we saw the condition of the buildings and got a sense of the scholastic environment in the classes, we realised that before introducing a new board, we had to first work on improving the infrastructure," he told PTI in an interview.
Sisodia, who is also Delhi's Education minister, said the government put the work on the new board on the back-burner to focus on building infrastructure but now it is felt that the time has come to create a Delhi education board.
"The government is working on it (the new board). It is not going to be a replacement for CBSE but a next generation board," the minister said.
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Elaborating on how the board and its curriculum is likely to be, Sisodia said they plan to have separate grades for subjects for students, keeping in mind what they want to pursue.
"You have four grades for subjects. For instance, divide science into four grades -- science for doctors and engineers, science for sportsperson, science for humanities.
"If a child wants to become a journalist, he/she can take A grade language and maybe C grade of science so that if he has to cover science, he is well-versed with the basics," Sisodia explained.
Another problem that the new board will address to is help students prepare for entrance exams. He said currently, a student studies 10 per cent of the curriculum for entrance exams in schools and the rest of the 90 per cent in coaching centres while preparing for entrances.
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"The examination system and curriculum should be practical. For example, as of now, if a class 12 student wants to appear for the IIT entrance exam, he will go to coaching centres.
"Why not make it part of the board? The child is not able to rise above his own capacity. So what is the advantage? We do not know what we are preparing the students for," he said.
Sisodia has also written about the necessity of having a separate board for Delhi in his recently launched book titled 'Shiksha', which talks about his takeaways from his tenure as Delhi's education minister.
After the Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE) had hiked its examination fee for board exams, Sisodia had said if things continue like this, the government may consider having its own board.
(With inputs from PTI)