Indian Certificate of Secondary Education

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The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) is an examination conducted by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, a private board designed to provide an examination in a course of general education, in accordance with the recommendations of the New Education Policy 2020 (India), through the medium of English.[1][2] The examination allows secure suitable representations of responsible schools (which are affiliated to it) in their states or territories. The National Admissions and Accreditation agency of the UK, UCAS (Universities and College Admission Services) recognizes ICSE at par with the Higher School qualification of University of Scotland.[citation needed]

ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education) is known for its comprehensive syllabus and primarily focus on English language and variety of subjects that it offers involving language, arts, commerce and science. ICSE is being taught in English Language only as a result ICSE student gain great command over English language and Literature from kindergarten which helps the students to acquire the art of writing compactly in English, which makes it easy for the ICSE passed out student to score well in competitive as well as language exams like IELTS, TOEFL etc.[3] ICSE has always been regarded as one of the best educational boards in India[by whom?] in terms of their rigorous syllabus, tough marking scheme for examinations, progressive evaluation and promotion criteria.

Subjects[edit]

Students taking the ICSE must write examinations in any six, seven or eight subjects. Of these, five subjects will be included in their final grade — out of these five, one will compulsorily be English, even if it is the subject in which the student has scored the lowest marks.[4][5] There are three groups of subjects. [6]

Group I - English, Second Language, Geography and History-Civics as compulsory subjects.

Group II - Choose any two subjects from Science, Mathematics, Economics, Commercial Studies, etc.

Group III - Choose any one subject from Home Science, Fashion Designing, Computer Applications, etc.

Legal validity challenged[edit]

In the year 2015, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (now called Ministry of Education) had asked the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), which conducts the ICSE and the ISC examinations, to furnish evidence to justify its existence.[7]

Criticism[edit]

In 2013, a 20-year-old Indian student studying in the US, Debarghya Das, claimed in his personal blog to have downloaded the ICSE scores for over 100,000 students by scraping. His analysis of the data showed interesting patterns in the marking system, suggesting that the marks were rounded off with no student getting under 33 marks out of a possible 100. The reason for this was reportedly attributed to moderation; a practice also followed by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), it involved tweaking candidates' marks to account for paper variances.[8][9]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "CISCE". www.cisce.org. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  2. ^ "CISCE". www.cisce.org. Retrieved 23 September 2018.
  3. ^ [citation needed]
  4. ^ "Counting 7 subjects is discriminatory, says ICSE Board". HT Correspondent. Hindustan Times. 3 June 2010. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 11 March 2015.
  5. ^ "ICSE pupils can again draw best-5 score from six subjects". The Times of India. 11 January 2013. Retrieved 11 March 2015.
  6. ^ "ICSE Class 10 Subjects, Syllabus & Study Plan and Material". ALLEN Overseas. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
  7. ^ "Govt test for ICSE board". Telegraph India. 29 October 2015. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
  8. ^ "Indian student in Cornell University hacks into ICSE, ISC database". The Times of India. 6 June 2013. Archived from the original on 10 June 2013. Retrieved 8 June 2013.
  9. ^ "He didn't hack, he scraped ICSE results and look what he found". NDTV Gadgets. 6 June 2013. Retrieved 8 June 2013.

External links[edit]