Mumbai: Maharashtra state board schools are set to start their academic session from April 1 — instead of June 15 till this year — from 2025. This change which has been approved by the steering committee in order to ensure that the schools affiliated with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHC) align with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schedule which commences from April 1 and concludes on March 31.
The revised State Curriculum Framework for School Education (SCF-SE), which has been approved, proposes for the state board schools to align with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the CBSE curriculum as well as schedule. As part of the move, it has also been approved for the state board schools to implement NCERT curriculum.
The move, however, has drawn criticism from certain quarters. “Maharashtra board schools used to start from June 15 as several parts of the state experience extreme heat in April and May. It is not correct on the government’s part to force students to come out in extreme heat. If they fall sick, or even something worse happens, because of extreme heat, who will take the responsibility,” asked Nitin Dalvi, Maharashtra State Student-Parent Teacher Federation (MSSPTF). He was getting calls from several concerned parents, he said.
To allay those fears, State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) officials said that the move is not going to be implemented immediately. “It won’t be like we will just force the decision that schools should start following this from the coming academic year. We are ready to be flexible on when the schools want to implement it. Anyways, the SCF-Se has only been approved for classes 3-12. This will only be implemented once the SCF-SE is rolled out for classes 1 & 2 as well,” a senior SCERT official told the Free Press Journal adding that “their is no need to fear anything.”
