ICSE results: Schools pull out all stops to help students score better

A key issue faced by students this year was time management, as they struggled to manage their studies amid schools’ transition back to offline mode of exams.

Mumbai: With class 10 students appearing for board exams for the first time in two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, city schools affiliated with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) went over and above typical classroom teaching to ensure the success of their students.

Representational image (Sushil Kumar/ HT photo)

“To ensure that all students perform well, we conducted remedial classes since the beginning of the term. Also, hosting three prelims helped prepare our students well in the run-up to the final examinations. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our resilient students, our hardworking teachers and understanding parents, who were part of this journey in ensuring outstanding results this year,” said Geeta Aggarwal, principal, EuroSchool Airoli.

A key issue faced by students this year was time management, as they struggled to manage their studies amid schools’ transition back to offline mode of exams.

Bishrutaa Chakraborty, a student of Bombay Scottish School, Mahim who scored 97%, said, “Semester 1 was initially difficult for us because of the change in the paper pattern. Time management was the major issue faced by most of the students in the multiple-choice questions section.”

Our school came up with a solution by holding two prelims, one offline and the other online, which gave us a pretty good idea of how we would need to manage our time on the day of the boards, Chakraborty added.

In all, students from Bombay Scottish High School appeared for six mock papers as part of their preparation, which the school approached using a mix of strategies. When the board announced the exams in May, they cancelled the pre-boards and conducted an additional round of revision.

“This helped students exceptionally because they were comfortable with the syllabus by then. We also conducted extra classes for the students online along with the offline classes,” said school principal Sunita George.

Schools also had to make an extra effort to help students adjust to the format of the multiple-choice questions. “Initially, there was only going to be an MCQ exam so we prepared students accordingly. Later, we were informed that Semester 2 exams would be in the subjective pattern, so helping students transition from only MCQ to part-MCQ and subjective exams was a little difficult. We held extra lectures for the students after classes along with the bridge course,” Sheela Mallya, academic head, Children’s Academy.

Other schools, taking into account the impact of the pandemic on emotional and mental health, provided counselling to help students deal with exam pressure and performance anxiety.

Amolika Mukherjee, a student of Jamnabai Narsee School, who scored 99.6%, said, “We were encouraged to seek the help of the school psychologist, who has worked alongside our teachers to prepare us for the exams. Counselling helped me and others since we were the first batch to give boards in two years. This came with a lot of high expectations for some of us.”