HYDERABAD: The proposed central legislation to regulate international schools will turn out to be fatal for several city schools which call themselves international without holding required recognition.
With the proposed regulations suggesting that each of the international schools should have recognition from international boards, several schools in the city are trying hard to get IGCSE (International General Certificate for Secondary Education) or IB (International Baccalaureate) recognition years after they were set up.
Currently, only nine international schools out of the 45 located in the city and surrounding areas are registered with international boards. The rest teach CBSE and ICSE syllabus in their air-conditioned classrooms, calling themselves international.
With the central government planning to come up with a legislation for International and Global schools from the coming academic year, these schools might soon lose their international tag. Interestingly, most of these ‘international’ schools were established in the state in the past two to three years. "The schools will have to drop the tag once central legislation comes into effect. The state government is only waiting for it to crack the whip on these schools," said Poonam Malakondaiah, the in-charge director of school education who has now been transferred to rain shadow department.
Interestingly, the central legislation also suggests that all international schools which offer international syllabus should offer state syllabus. There are two schools among the nine recognised ones in the city which offer only international syllabus.
Representatives of some of the international schools which were recognised by boards said the recognition process would take more than three years to complete and hence many of the new players have not yet started the paper work. "Most of the schools claim to have world class infrastructure. But none of them have the required classrooms and other facilities which can rank them as world class. So most of them are linked to CBSE or ICSE boards," an official said.
However, with a rising demand for international schools in the city, several managements seem to be hard selling the international tag even when they do not have recognition to run international curriculum. "The parents just want an international tag. The schools sell the tag well and charge huge fee ranging from Rs 80,000 to Rs 1.35 lakh," an official from school education department said. Meanwhile, some of the schools which had earlier tried for international board’s recognition are falling back to CBSE as it is also considered to be an ‘international syllabus’.
"CBSE is now offered in countries in Middle East and hence could be considered as international board. A school can be called international even if CBSE syllabus is offered there," said a management representative of an international school.
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