St Lawrence High School, one of the last prominent English medium schools under the Bengal board, has switched to the Delhi-based ICSE council.
The first St Lawrence batch to write their ICSE (Class X board) examinations will be in 2024. Those students are now in Class IX.
“This is a choice of most parents. They had been demanding this for a long time...,” said Father Francis Jimmy Keepuram, principal of St Lawrence High School.
“When we started the process, the school had met the parents and they had given their consent in writing.”
The process of affiliation to the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) started in 2018 and the school got the affiliation in the beginning of April 2022.
On Saturday, the school officially informed parents about the affiliation to CISCE.
Current students of Classes X and XII and students newly admitted this year to Class XI will continue with the state board, a notice from the school said.
The educational institution started in 1810 as an elementary school and in 1855 came to be known as St John Chrysostom’s School. From 1913 boys were trained for the Junior Cambridge Course and in 1920 the school was accorded recognition as a high school by the University of Calcutta. The first batch of students for the matriculation examination was sent up in 1922.
Father Lawrence Rodriques SJ took charge of St John Chrysostom High School at Bowbazar Street in the early 1930s. The place was very congested and there was no playground.
“Father Lawrence felt the need for developing and expanding the school. So he began to look for a better place and found a plot of land in Ballygunge, belonging to St Xavier’s College...,” the school website says.
In January 1937, St Chrysostom School was shifted to Ballygunge Circular Road and rechristened St Lawrence High School.
In the recent past institutions like South Point High School, Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School have changed to CBSE from the state board.
The first batch at South Point was in 2014 and at Gokhale Memorial it was 2016.
Parents who have transferable jobs prefer a national board to a state board, an official of South Point said.
“Many students wanted CBSE because the entrance tests that they would appear after Class XII was closer to a CBSE curriculum,” said Sanghamitra Mukherjee, rector of Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School.