‘Will merge international board with state education board’

After announcing last month that the international education board will be scrapped, the Maharashtra government on Tuesday decided to merge the Maharashtra International

After announcing last month that the international education board will be scrapped, the Maharashtra government on Tuesday decided to merge the Maharashtra International Education Board (MIEB) with the state education board — Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE). With this, all the schools affiliated to MIEB will be re-affiliated to the state education board. The decision was taken in the state cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

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Ministers were of the view that there should be only one board of education for schools and there should be no discrimination in imparting education to students, officials said.

MIEB was formed by the previous BJP government led by Devendra Fadnavis in 2018. In the last two years, around 81 schools comprising 25,310 students were affiliated to the board. Of them, 60 were zilla parishad schools while 12 were private-aided, eight were self-financed and one was nagarpalika school.

However, on February 26, school education minister Varsha Gaikwad declared scrapping of the international board.

“The ministers said if the policy of the state government is to impart quality education to all students then it will not be fair to set up a separate board in the name of providing high-quality education to selected students. The school syllabus should be approved by the Maharashtra State Council for Educational Research and Training (MSCERT), which was not followed by MIEB before preparing syllabus for textbooks,” said an official from the school education department.

“The department was also of the view that there is no need to have two education boards in the state, after which the cabinet decided to merge MIEB with MSBSHSE,” he said.

It was also decided that MSCERT will prepare international standard syllabus for all schools according to the new policy.

The school education minister had, last week in the state Assembly, said MIEB was controlled by a certain group of people and had no transparency in its working. “The syllabus was not even approved by the MSCERT that prepares syllabus for school textbooks. The expert members such as Dr Raghunath Mashelkar, Dr Vijay Bhatkar hardly attended any meeting of the syllabus committee. Rest of the members were not qualified enough,” the minister had said.