Bridging Global Standards with National Vision in Education

Parents are often seen investing a lot of time and effort into the school admission process . Afterall, your child is going to spend the next 12 years of their lives in that environment. Choice of curriculum is a key factor in the decision of a school. India is one of those countries that has a wide range of curriculum for K-12 education. Despite the existence of several boards, India’s education system has been deeply tied to theory-based academic outcomes. With the advent of the New Education Policy in 2020, the education sector has been looking forward to implementing the long-awaited reforms proposed by the NEP. The NEP has taken a cross-disciplinary approach, with a flexibility of choice as a primary impetus for developing independence of thought in children. The NEP promotes the development of 21st century skills like critical thinking, inquiry-based learning and multilingualism, adopting a holistic approach to development. Interestingly, there are many reforms proposed in the NEP that match with the current format of the IB board. For example, one of the key reforms of the NEP was to bring the Early Years program into the mainstream curriculum for the very first time in India. Interestingly, the IB has a Primary Years Program(3 to 12-year-olds) that emphasizes experiential and inquiry-based learning. Language learning is also underscored as a means to drive basic reasoning abilities and intercultural understanding. The NEP emphasizes skills like numeracy and literacy along with the development of social, emotional and cognitive abilities with a practical, application-based approach to learning. The IB curriculum is designed for depth of understanding of a subject rather than speed skills that require you to race against time to hit the maximum number of solved questions in an exam. The IB pedagogy focuses on ‘learning to learn’ and ‘learning to think’ instead of rote-learning. The IB program offers the Approaches to Learning( ATLs) right from the Middle Years program( beginning 11-16 years) which is focused on getting students to learn how to learn and stimulate their thinking process. It is designed with the objective of helping students learn about themselves.