GIIS students, parents and staff had an engaging LLS webinar session with Mr Anurag Tripathi, Secretary of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), on 27th of June. There was a great exchange of ideas on how CBSE is taking effective steps to meet the new needs created by the pandemic.

The webinar was attended by over 300 participants worldwide.

Mr Tripathi mentioned that he has a long association with GIIS and appreciated Mr Atul Temurnikar who envisioned to start the first school with CBSE curriculum.

Watch Mr Tripathi’s speech here:

GIIS is one of the first schools in Singapore to offer CBSE curriculum to students. The school has 18 years of rich experience in offering the CBSE curriculum and a high percentage of our CBSE pass outs have moved on to pursue their higher education prestigious universities around the world. Mr Atul Temurnikar thanked CBSE and Mr Tripathi for the board’s support to GIIS in starting the first school to offer the curriculum in South East Asian countries.

Watch Mr Atul’s thank you speech here:

In his address to parents and students, Mr Tripathi explained how CBSE has integrated 21st-century skills like 4Cs, knowledge of technology, media literacy, leadership, flexibility and adaptability into the four subject areas that are the main pillars of the curriculum – mathematics, science, social science and language & literature. In CBSE, teachers use these four main subject areas as a base to train the students in 21st-century skills. For example, mathematics is used to teach critical thinking and innovation and language & literature to teach effective communication.

Mr Tripathi said that the pandemic has created an urgent need to implement certain steps in the field of education, like– bring the most current digital technology to schools, make the Principals pedagogical leader and train the staff in current skills.

The CBSE curriculum has undergone many changes in recent years to stay updated with the new direction that the world is moving in. Mr Tripathi mentioned that a few of the strategic changes are – the introduction of Applied Mathematics as a subject, introducing DEEKSHA and Vidyadaan, enhanced parental engagement in self-learning of students, collaboration of CBSE with Fit India Movement to teach the importance of Yoga and nutrition and including 1 compulsory project in the curriculum to be done by the students.

Apart for these, online training for over 2,00,000 teachers and Principals have been conducted and the structure of assessment has been modified to include minimum 20% Competency Based Question in Grade 10 exam and 10% in Grade 12 exam. This is done to meet the new needs of the focus of learning to shift from rote to more application-based approach.

In the end, Mr Tripathi appreciated GIIS’ initiative in effectively implementing virtual classes and asked him to share a project or analysis of how the model was effectively deployed at such a large scale and in much less time.

Mr Tripathi’s speech was followed by a Q and A session where the students on the panel put forth to him some relevant questions faced by the learning community in the times of pandemic.

The LLS and Mr Trpathi’s insights came just right in time when the learner community is anxious as to what are the next steps for continuity in education in view of the pandemic.