Switching curriculams
Dear Advisor,
As I understand, if one moves from GCSE/IB to CBSE/ICSE, he has to repeat the class b’se of age cut off, and if he moves from CBSE/ICSE to GCSE/IB will move to next class?
If a child moves GCSE to ICSE and then back in future, he will be a year behind his GCSE school mates?
Is that correct, under new KHDA rules and school can’t do much about it?
Sanjay
Dear Sanjay,
The repeat is the other way around from CBSE to other curricula. It is not so much age-related, as the fact that the start dates for the academic year are different – so the CBSE curriculum begins in April whilst the GCSE and IB (and most other international curricula) start in September.
So if you have a child studying in Grade 6 in the CBSE curriculum and you wanted to transfer him to one of the international curricula, he would start semester 1 in April in the CBSE curriculum and then move to the other curriculum in September ,where he would be placed in the same equivalent year group in the first term of the equivalent grade/year group.
In a 12 grade school he would join grade 6; in the UK curriculum it would be the equivalent which is year 7. Since he has not completed grade 6, he cannot be promoted to grade 7 or year 8. He would effectively “lose” a semester in terms of completing the academic year.
This is not a new regulation. In fact there is more flexibility now and the student’s age can be taken into account so in Primary school, this is more likely to be the deciding factor and based on assessment it is possible that a child can switch without having to repeat, but this would usually only apply up to grade 1. After this, the decision is based on the transfer certificate and current school grade.
