ISC Full Form

ISC Full Form

ISC stands for Indian School Certificate. It is the Higher Secondary Examination or 12th class examination conducted by Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE). So only those students, who have passed their 12th class examination by the school affiliated by CISCE, can get the degree of Indian school certificate (ISC).

Further, the ISC examination developed and planned with the Current Education Policy Regulations of 1986. It is a private board of education, officially set up by University of Cambridge Local Examination on 3 November 1958. The students who have passed their 12th class examination through ISC board, their certificate will be acceptable for the admission in undergraduate courses in some foreign universities like: in UK universities, in UAE and others. However, the students can find ISC schools in all over India, but in Lucknow, Mumbai and Kolkata they can get the best ISC schools. Moreover, ISC schools are also located in some other countries like UAE (Unit Arab Emirates), UK and others.

English is the compulsory subject for the ISC board, as except language subjects all other subjects are in English language. Other elective subjects for ISC examination include: Compulsory English, Elective English, Indian Language, Modern Foreign Language, Classical Language, Geography, History, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Economics, Commerce, Accounting, Business Studies, Mathematics Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Biotechnology, Computer Science, Electricity and Electronics, Engineering Physics, Environmental Science, Geometrical and Mechanical Drawing, Geometrical and Building Drawing, Fashion Designing, Home Science, Hospitality Management, Legal Studies, Mass Media & Communication, Art, Music, Physical Education and  Socially Useful Productive Work.

The students of ISC board are allowed to choose any three , four or five out of all above mentioned subjects with the sixth one (English) which is mandatory for all. However students have to choose the combinations of subjects as offered or based on the stream of education, according to that respective school.

Now, the criteria and eligibility for the students, who wishes to take examination from ISC Board, are:

  1. The students must have passed 10th class examination from a recognized board.
  2. They should have a minimum attendance of 75 percent.
  3. They must be doing a regular and full time course at any of the schools affiliated to CISCE. (The students who are doing correspondence courses or home-schooled will not be allowed to take the examination from ISC board.

Further, the result of ISC examination is based on the external examination conducted by the end of class 12, as well as the internal assessment on socially useful productive work and community also takes into account for the result.

Moreover, there are some advantages and disadvantages of ISC courses.

Advantages:

  1. In its syllabus ISC offers a lot of subjects as an option for the students.
  2. Each subject has depth that provides a deep insight of subjects to students.
  3. ISC board has more emphasis on the English language due to which the students from this board are more proficient in English rather than others, as well as the examinations like TOEFL and other English based competitive examinations become easy for them.
  4. It provides more practical skills to the students for becoming active problem solvers rather than just being good academics.
  5. Most of the graduate schools all over the world accept ISC degree as an official educational qualification. In Particular, the UK and UAE universities give preference to ISC students rather than other Indian boards students.
  6. ISC schools encourage their students to give time to the area of their interests rather than only focusing on academics.

Disadvantages: The only disadvantage of this board is that it has a large number of subjects in comparison to other boards like CBSE, that makes the students sometimes very uncomfortable with its vast syllabus. Although ISC syllabus makes a deeper understanding and enhances life skills and analytical skills but still, due to their vast range of subjects it is not easy for students to get involved in extra activities and practical things.

Further, there are some contradictions regarding this board, that is, in 2015 the Human Resource Development Ministry had asked CISCE to justify the existence of ICSE and ISC examinations.

Moreover, if we compare ISC with CBSE we find that this board is much older than CBSE. If ISC is affiliated with a private organization, CBSE is an Indian government board. The syllabus and English of ISC is more comprehensive as well as significant than CBSE.

So, overall we can say that for knowledge purposes and for those students who wish to go abroad for higher education, ISC is the best option for them, but for others CBSE is better option, as in India all the competitive examinations are based on CBSE syllabus.