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India’s CBSE may open Dubai centre Muaz Shabandari / 26 September 2013 India’s largest education board has announced plans to set up a new centre for schools in the Gulf. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) centre will deal with student and school issues in an attempt to provide them with better services. “There is a definite need for a centre and over the next two or three months, we will have a sub-regional office in the Gulf region. The centre will most likely be in Dubai since it has the largest concentration of CBSE schools in the Gulf,” said board chairman Vineet Joshi. India’s Human Resource Development Minister Dr Pallam Raju, who was speaking with school principals in Dubai via teleconference, made the formal announcement on Wednesday. The CBSE chief also announced the board’s plan to start accreditation for all schools affiliated with the board. Inspection teams from India will visit schools in the Gulf region every five years to assess education quality as part of the plan. “We were working on developing this accreditation system for the last two years and we have launched it now. It will be compulsory for all CBSE schools to get accredited. Those schools that fail to receive an accreditation will be given one chance, failing which their CBSE affiliation will be revoked,” said Joshi. “The accreditation system will follow a peer assessor scheme where two assessors from private agencies and one CBSE observer will evaluate the school over a period of two days. A list of recommendations will be presented to the board and it will then be examined.” The educational board has selected 12 private agencies to nominate CBSE school principals who will qualify to be peer assessors after completing an accreditation test. The new system is being implemented to protect student interests and improve teaching and learning standards. “Schools associated with CBSE are not supposed to commercialise and, therefore, education cannot be looked at as a product. There has to be a culture of continuous improvement and the accreditation system will help them in this aspect,” added Joshi. Reports by education regulators have constantly highlighted the need for CBSE to move away from rote learning and the board has responded by announcing a series of changes over the last few years. “We are looking at consolidating the changes we have done since we started implementing them four years back. We value suggestions raised by schools and it reflects some of the issues which they may face.” Each year, the board affiliates 800 new schools and the new accreditation policies are expected to come a long way in improving education standards in Indian schools following the curriculum. muaz@khaleejtimes.com Taylor Scott International
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