Aikiyam School received its first provisional affiliation from the Central Board  of Secondary Education (CBSE) in 2008, for a period of three years. Recently, the affiliation was extended for an additional five years, through March 2016.

 

CBSE promotes creative education at all levels through the application of learning by doing.

 

The teacher’s role is “shifted from being a source of knowledge to being a facilitator”, while resources available in the child’s own environment are utilized as unifying themes for different subjects. This approach is sufficiently aligned with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's ideas about "integral education", for the Aikiyam team to have applied to CBSE for affiliation.

 

We believe the resulting accreditation is unique as we do not know of another case in India where a school in an underprivileged area became CBSE-affiliated and recognized.

 

As Aikiyam now follows the CBSE curriculum, the single standardized exam given once a year, to determine a student’s achievement and grade level, is no longer required. These make or break, one-size-fits-all exams make no allowance for individual, economic, racial or cultural differences and may change the course of a child’s life on the basis of a few hours of writing once a year.

 

Instead CBSE allows the school to assess a student’s progress with a varied series of informal, formative assessments such as short but more frequent tests for spelling, etc.; portfolios with samples of students' work; and/or teachers' observations and continuous documentation.

 

Performances, presentations and exhibitions in which students demonstrate what they have learned are also useful forms of formative assessment, enabling us to measure a student’s abilities and interests in many different ways to form a composite picture of the whole child.

 

The students do however take exams approved by the CBSE in grade nine at New Era Secondary School (NESS), an Auroville-run CBSE high school for both Aurovilian and village children. For those children who want to go to a State Board high school instead of NESS, Aikiyam School is approved by CBSE to give a recognized ‘school transfer’ certificate after grade 8.

 

For further information, contact the school's administrator,