Revathi Srinivasan: Personally, I feel there is nothing wrong in having three or four boards. It's a large country.
Ranjona Banerji: We do not have three or four boards; we have 26+ boards.
Kishore Pillai: No, the issue is, whenever there is a proposal, is it documented in a way that tells everything about it? The proposal should have all those things in place. Then probably we won't even have the argument of rural-urban or anything.
Avnita Bir: I think the CBSE has 10, 000 schools affiliated to it and it offers its curriculum into the remote rural areas and it is catering to the diversity. It has schools --- elite schools, private schools, govt schools --- so it is catering to a diverse population.
Sunita George: In Mumbai, if you look at a CBSE or ICSE school, every school is doing so much add-on, but the board is the same. So nowhere is it given that a board binds you. It just gives you a physical framework.
Archana Singh: If you look at the time tables of two different schools following the same board, they are different. This goes for their question paper patterns and textbooks.
Zeenat Bhojabhoy: If you compare environmental education in Std X in the ICSE and I'm teaching environmental management in Std X IGCSE, what stops me from adopting the teaching strategy across both?
Avnita Bir: I think educationists should sit together not even as a board. For example, CBSE was primarily an examination body. It was an administrative body rather than an academic body. Their academic inputs come from the NCERT. The NCERT has done the NCF and everything is based around the NCF, the ICSE, CBSE, and even state board textbooks. CBSE, ICSE, or IB, none of these boards has prescribed textbooks. They just say, these are the areas we want to cover in grade I, this is what we want to cover in grade II, that's all. After that, it is the school that is going to decide how to teach that topic.
Aditi Banerji: From the questions we are raising here, many have been answered by Kapil Sibal, like evaluation and not having an exam before Std XI, whatever board we follow. Now why are we so much in favour of it? Because the offshoot is extreme competitiveness and innumerable coaching classes, which are killing our children. So the biggest positive aspect is that if there is no Std X exam, students are absorbed within the same school. For those who are leaving, according to Sibal, there is going to be an extremely extensive question bank on which the children keep training. So, no matter where they go, they are trained accordingly. So if that is the criterion, then I think we need to accept it. Of course we're justified in thinking differently, but with an open mind...
As for the question of policy-makers, he has also very categorically stated that this is not something the politicians have come up with, out of their hat. He has had a committee on which he has teachers from every level --- from the pre-primary, primary, secondary, middle-school, and college level, and professors, retired as well as working. He had an entire team in place.
Ranjona Banerji: Well, it seems from outside that at least Mr Sibal has some interesting ideas.
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