Delta English School Grabs Grade 10 Exams by the Horns

Sharjah, UAE: When a grade 10 student thinks of the CBSE AISSE (All India Secondary School Examination), a fight-or-flight response innately kicks in with tell tale signs of fear, inability to remember information, amplified or declined appetite, sleeping difficulties, and headaches. On the contrary, the atmosphere at Delta English School was in diametric opposition as its grade 10 students beat all odds and channeled their winning streaks to achieve truly impressive sets of results on the recently concluded 2017 CBSE Secondary School Examination.

Delta English School has been building on its reputation for academic excellence over the past 25 years even though it has only been four years since its CBSE affiliation. Since 2014, the school recorded more A1, A2, and B1 grades than ever before and continuing in that same vein, this year, 45% of grades were A1 (10 CGPA) or A2 (9 CGPA) and 81% of grades were at B1 (8 CGPA) or above. Among all Delta English School grade 10 students:

Out of a 10-point cumulative GPA (CGPA) scale, 15% of all students attained a perfect 10 CGPA, 45% of all students attained a CGPA of 9 or higher, 81% of all students attained a CGPA of 8 or higher and 89% of all students attained a CGPA of 7 or higher. Delta English School students first undertook their CBSE Secondary School Examination in 2014. Since then, the percentage of Delta English School students scoring ≥ 9 CGPA has increased by 10% and those scoring ≥ 8 CGPA has increased by 31%. Delta English School grade 10 average CGPA for 2017 is 8.7 – higher than the 8.2 CGPA secured in its first Secondary School Exam.

However, the school’s pass rate has remained at a remarkable 100% since 2014. Across all students, 88% of grades were better than predicted on entry into Secondary School (based on grade eight exit exams) and grade nine final exam outcomes, which confirm the efficacy of first class teaching and learning support levels engineered at Delta English School.

“The grade 10 results are testament to the quality of our educational programs and have been achieved alongside a rich and busy extra-curricular program,” remarked Anita D’cruz, Principal and Executive Director of Delta English School. She further commented, “The academic success of these Titans should come as no surprise considering that Delta English School offers a challenging and rewarding educational experience that hybridizes scholastic and co-scholastic domains inside and outside the classroom. In fact, my expectation was that 30% of our students should have secured a 10 CGPA considering their competency levels. Upon analyzing the results, we observed that some candidates missed the perfect score target by a few decimal points in their CGPA. However, I am confident that we can meet our expectations with the upcoming student batches. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the department heads, faculty and parent community who were the impetus behind our Titans’ success. Over the years, we have watched them evolve, excel and transform into confident global citizens ready to take on any challenges presented by 21st century dynamics. They are an ambitious, energetic and engaging group of individuals and will unequivocally experience greater rewards in life.”

Despite the recent success, certain stakeholders at Delta English School perceive that the school has not yet reached its highest performance potential and one such individual is Anuja Anand, Academic Supervisor and Head of Natural Sciences at Delta English School. According to Anand, “I do share in the celebration of our students’ success but I am perturbed by our lower-than-projected outcomes in Science. With the National Agenda demanding that our country must feature in the top 20 countries in PISA and among the top 15 in TIMSS, Delta English School’s focus and excellence in STEM must now be stronger and bolder than ever.”

Anand continued by saying, “My 14 years as a teacher and administrator at Delta English School has revealed that students generally adopt a binary approach to Science – they either love or hate it, with some going solo on Physics, Chemistry or Biology. Last year, we rolled out a brand new curriculum framework that incorporates differentiated instruction, student-led learning, 21st century CCR (College and Career Readiness) skills, extensive interdisciplinary connections and multi-variant ICT integrations. The grade 10 students, whose overall success we have just witnessed, were members of this pilot program. With scientific process skills going to form the basis for every science topic in our new framework, future Delta English School students are guaranteed to develop excitement and deeper appreciation for all Science streams, close their Science learning gaps, increase their Science outcome-to-goal ratios and will eventually become passionate to pursue stable careers in Science.”

Like Anand, Delta English School’s Department of Mathematics shares a similar perspective of the school’s academic success. A statement released by the Department, in response to the recent CBSE grade 10 Math outcomes, reads as follows:

It is universally accepted that Mathematics, of all courses, renders the highest fright factor to the nth possibility. It is our responsibility, as Delta English School subject-matter experts and teachers, to make Math approachable and relatable across grade levels. We commend grade level 10 students on their recent victory but strongly feel that there is ample room for raising the performance bar. In recent department meetings, we have started to aggressively bridge Math with alien courses like English, Social Science and even Art Education. We have already slated multiple inter-department workshops in the coming months during which we will raise topics from various Math courses and have non-Math instructors chalk out ways to creatively embed Math concepts within their lesson plans. This will offer opportunities for students to gain real-life perspectives of Math in action. One of our department pipeline initiatives is to roll out a comprehensive e-learning solution that will gamify the Math experience and create differentiated learning pathways for each student. Our Math faculty has already made student-led learning the focus of each lesson and will increase the usage of our existing state-of-the-art Math labs to complement each lesson’s small group activities. These enhancements are part of a grassroots campaign that carries a 1-2 year gestation period, but will ultimately have all Delta English School Math courses synced with disciplines that students imagined could never relate to Math.

Quality of assessments at Delta English School has been a major talking point in recent months. Unlike majority of independent schools, Delta English School possesses a proprietary assessment engine that was born nine years ago. The platform delivers multiple testing modes throughout the year that are challenging and diverse in composition, encompassing vignette-based multiple choice and constructed-response items. Thelma Thomas, Head of English Language Arts at Delta English School, with over 30 years of teaching experience, believes that this assessment engine is due for major upgrades. “Over the past five years, we have witnessed double-digit increases in student scores owing to the high number of testing modes that we administer each month. While we can observe this tangible student improvement, we must not take for granted the quality of our test items. It is paramount to discern low versus high stake exams and approach each test item with a HOTS-based mentality. As CBSE continues to embrace HOTS-based test content over rote memorization, our assessments must dynamically reflect this trend,” said Thomas. The executive administration at Delta English School has already began investigating and enhancing its assessment platform using a product roadmap that was developed over six months. When ready for live deployment, the new assessment engine will feature cross-curricular linkages, revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, technology-enhanced items, granular item analyses and outcome forecasting.