Now, IGCSE students can apply on time to varsities

Chennai: After several years of hard work by International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) school faculty in India, the Cambridge board has passed a resolution to change the examination and term dates in its schools in India.Cambridge board exams are usually held in June and results are out only by August making it impossible for many students to apply to Indian universities, since admissions would already be done by then.

The new exam series, aptly named the “March India series”, will happen in March. With this change, IGCSE schools will have a schedule similar to other CBSE, ICSE and Matriculation schools, where students get results by May or June. The term dates will be from second week of June till second week of April and the students will be given the same holiday breaks as other schools.

According to Akila Sreenivasan, coordinator at Akshar Arbol International School, the old exam dates was forcing many parents to make their children join other schools and there was a drop in the number of students joining IGCSE schools.

After the change she said that parents would be prompted to send their children to IGCSE schools.The Cambridge board currently offers over 80 subjects to choose from for class 10. However, now, the number of subjects will be narrowed down. Only the subjects that are most favoured in India will be made available for the Indian exams.  

Priya Dixit, a parent, said that she was well aware of the exam dates when she made her son change from a CBSE school to an IGCSE school, “I also knew that students could get a ‘predicted marksheet’ in case they needed to apply to Indian universities sooner. I’m happy about the change but I’m worried that some subjects could get diluted because of the change.”