• I went to public faculty in Ohio, and now my three youngsters are going to highschool in New Delhi. 
• There’s a lottery system to get into probably the most sought-after colleges, which places stress on mother and father.
• My youngsters have been studying a number of languages since they had been in pre-Okay. 

My foray into the Indian faculty system started with training — not my youngsters’s, however my very own. I met my husband throughout my study-abroad semester in New Delhi. We obtained married in 2010 and made our dwelling there. We now have three sons, aged 10, 8, and 4, who’re enrolled in an Indian school.

I grew up attending a public school in suburban Ohio. My expertise dwelling within the megacity of New Delhi and navigating the college system right here vastly differs from what I grew up with.

Here are my firsthand views on the disparities between colleges in India and the US.

Formal education begins early

One of probably the most placing variations I observed is the age at which formal education begins for youngsters in India.

In our case, my youngsters began in a proper pre-Okay program after they had been 3 years previous. The immense demand for high quality training, particularly in India’s cities, the place competitors for varsity admission is fierce, drives this early begin. This results in the prevailing notion that if you happen to do not enroll your youngster within the formal faculty system early, you would possibly miss the window of alternative to safe a spot in one of many extra coveted establishments later.

There’s plenty of stress to get into some colleges

School admissions in New Delhi are a high-stakes endeavor, not like the public-school system I grew up with within the US, the place your handle largely dictates which faculty you attend.

The admissions course of right here is advanced and multifaceted, incorporating elements corresponding to proximity to the college and alumni standing. But colleges additionally take into account issues like mother and father’ training ranges, giving desire to better-educated mother and father with the concept that it could sign the household prioritizes training. Even elements like a toddler’s gender are taken into consideration. Historically in India, many households prioritized the training of sons over that of daughters as a result of the sons would proceed to care for his or her mother and father in previous age. Schools, in awarding extra factors in admissions consideration to ladies, are attempting to advocate for women’ training and proper that longstanding gender bias. 

After college students meet these standards, colleges choose them via lotteries. The acceptance charges at a few of the most sought-after colleges are staggeringly low, hovering at round 1%. The stress on mother and father to safe their kid’s admission begins months, if not years, prematurely, and this intense competitors could be extremely disturbing.

There are extra one-day faculty holidays

I bear in mind rising up with leisurely summer season and winter breaks that ranged from three weeks to a few months in size. My youngsters, then again, solely get pleasure from a six-week summer season hiatus from mid-May to late June, and a 10-day break in January.

However, the Indian faculty calendar compensates with frequent one-day holidays all year long. These single-day “chuttis”— “holidays” in Hindi — embody an array of non secular and public holidays, together with Eid, Christmas, Buddha’s Birthday, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, Diwali, varied Hindu gods’ birthdays, Sikh gurus’ birthdays, and nationwide holidays corresponding to Independence Day and Republic Day.

My youngsters are studying a number of languages

Most Indian colleges undertake a bilingual method to training. In our case, instructors educate our youngsters in English, our youngsters have studied Hindi since kindergarten, and so they’ll start studying a 3rd overseas language within the fourth grade. This multilingual method displays the varied linguistic panorama of India and prepares college students to speak successfully in each a rustic as various as India and within the wider world.

There’s extra emphasis on STEM topics

Indian colleges place important emphasis on STEM topics. While they do educate fundamental grammar, there’s usually much less emphasis on studying full books as a part of the curricula.

In my youngsters’s English textbooks, there are excerpts from works corresponding to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” “Treasure Island,” and “The Jungle Book,” however academics assign few full novels as studying. In distinction, in his environmental-studies class, my fifth grader is delving into matters together with human and plant anatomy that I did not encounter till my freshman 12 months of faculty within the US. This concentrate on STEM topics typically comes at the price of arts and humanities training, requiring mother and father to complement their youngsters’s studying in these areas exterior faculty.

While navigating the Indian training system — and the training system in any nation, for that matter — has its personal set of challenges, our household has embraced this journey. We are excited to see the way it shapes our kids’s futures, and alternatives for progress, studying, and adaptation.