My experience with different education boards

Different school boards feature different curriculums, teaching styles and types of questions given in papers. I have experienced PYP, MYP, IGCSE and CBSE over the past 11 years. I’m an ADHD + Dysgraphia student and my experience in each of these boards greatly differed based on how my work in them was impacted by my issues.

In PYP and MYP (both parts of IB), which were during primary and middle school respectively, I had relatively few issues. The syllabus was fairly simple and didn’t require any rote learning, so I didn’t struggle at all with academics. Additionally, the teachers always tried to make classes as enjoyable and interactive as possible, so I would rarely get bored or distracted.

For example, instead of spending the available 45 minutes reading from a textbook and writing definitions and keywords on the board, teachers would show us ppt presentations and videos and make us do activities in order to keep us engaged for the duration of the class. On the other hand, there was just as much emphasis placed on subjects like English and social sciences as there was on math. As a result, I would find myself having to write lots of long essays. This was troublesome due to my dysgraphia, which would make my hands hurt and worsened the quality of my written work. Overall, however, these were definitely the boards I was most comfortable with.

Having done IB for most of my life, the transition to IGCSE in the ninth grade was difficult. While the two were fairly similar, IGCSE did not have as much of a “fun” element and the subjects felt harder. In addition to greater importance being given to numerical (calculation) questions, I also had to make use of keywords and follow specific guidelines when writing essay answers. It did not provide the creative freedom that IB did. Due to there being more content to cover, it was also essential that I paid attention in class. Unfortunately, due to my already prevalent focus issues and how rigid the curriculum was, I was unable to do this and would often retain very little from my classes. Writing assignments were also as numerous as in IB so I continued to struggle with that. These problems culminated in me doing very poorly in ninth grade and scoring around 70%.

The next year, however, I was formally diagnosed with ADHD and Dysgraphia. I had not known before but IGCSE had special accommodations to deal with students who had issues of this type. Due to my problems with writing, I was provided with 25% extra time for all my papers. This allowed me to think clearly before having to start writing and also let me take breaks when my hand started hurting. Alongside this, there was an option of having a scribe, which I declined as having another person with me would make it hard to focus and a third thing that erased my dysgraphia-related problems altogether. You see, for certain papers which required long essays, I was given access to my laptop. Typing instead of writing was a great help as I became significantly faster and suffered no pain in my hands. It also improved my grammar and syntax (mind you, no autocorrect was allowed or used). I made a great improvement in the tenth grade and got A*s in most of my subjects.

Afterward, I aspired to go for JEE due to my desire to get a computer science degree and switched to CBSE. What followed was the most difficult period of my life, academic-wise. CBSE had more content in the first few chapters of the subject than that same subject had in both the ninth and tenth put together. I found the syllabus terribly boring and would often lose focus in class. This caused me more trouble than it had in the previous ten years of school, as there was more content (formulas, definitions, tables, diagrams) to memorize and the teachers were also moving at an extremely fast pace so that they could finish everything

by the finals. This caused my performance in class assignments and tests to be extremely poor. CBSE also provided accommodations and I would receive an extra hour for my examinations, but I wasn’t allowed to use the laptop, which meant my dysgraphia had come back to haunt me. Even with the extra one hour, I performed terribly in my half terms barely passing my subjects and failing in physics by school standards. I wasn’t completely doomed, and managed to make a comeback over the next few months and did ok in my finals, but it required a superhuman effort. I would have to come back from school and work for another six hours nonstop just to stay afloat. Even on the days before the final exams, I had to stay up late so I could make sure I had completed my syllabus.

So it ended up okay, but CBSE was without a doubt the most problematic board for me. I would suggest to all students with learning disabilities, that you think about where you want to go to college first (CBSE is mainly for India, while IB and IGCSE are for abroad) and also take into consideration what issues you might face while studying when deciding the board you want to study in.