by Priyanka Nakoti
What actually changes when your child switches from CBSE to IGCSE
Families relocating abroad are usually told the curricula are "broadly similar". They are not, and the differences show up in specific, fixable places.
When a family relocates, the school admissions conversation tends to end with some version of “the curricula are broadly similar, they will adjust”. In my experience the adjustment is real but narrow: children do not fall behind across the board, they fall behind in four or five identifiable places. Knowing which places turns a vague, anxious year into a short piece of work.
Maths: the content matches, the presentation does not
A child moving from CBSE Grade 9 into IGCSE has usually met most of the mathematical content already. What they have not met is the marking culture. IGCSE is unforgiving about units, significant figures and rounding, and it awards method marks generously to working that is laid out legibly. CBSE students frequently arrive able to get the right answer and unable to earn full marks for it.
This is one or two months of deliberate practice, not a year of catching up.
Science: practicals become assessed, not demonstrated
CBSE and ICSE treat practical work as something that supports the theory. IGCSE and IB assess it directly — apparatus diagrams, variables, method write-ups, error analysis. A student who has watched practicals rather than written them up has a genuine gap here, and it is invisible until the first assessed practical comes back.
English: the comprehension style flips
Indian board comprehension rewards accurate retrieval. IGCSE and IB reward inference, tone and the writer’s intent, and they expect the answer to be supported with a short quotation. Bright students who have always scored well on comprehension are often the most thrown by this, because the skill that used to work now produces mid-range marks.
The subject nobody plans for: Hindi
This is the one that catches families out. A child studying Hindi as a first language under CBSE, who then moves abroad, usually cannot continue at that level — the school may not offer it, or may only offer it as a beginner’s foreign language. Two years later the family visits India and discovers the child can no longer read.
If you are moving, decide deliberately what happens to Hindi rather than letting it lapse by default. What I teach is spoken Hindi rather than any board’s syllabus — conversation first, then the script — and even one class a fortnight keeps both alive.
What I would actually do
In the first term after a move, I would spend the tuition budget on exam technique and on the assessed-practical write-up format, not on re-teaching content. The content is mostly there. The marks are being lost to conventions nobody has explained yet, and conventions are quick to teach.
If you are in the middle of a move and want a second opinion on where your child actually stands, the trial assessment is free and takes half an hour.