Salient features of American High School
Diploma Program curriculum

Education for Development

  • Linking knowledge to the world beyond the school,
  • Shifting learning from rote memory to understanding and practicum
  • Focusing on holistic development of child rather than textbook centric
  • Flexibility in examinations and integrated into classroom life
  • Nurturing an over-riding identity informed by caring concerns within the democratic
    polity of the country

Education for Citizenship

The national challenge for education is to strengthen our participatory democracy and the values enshrined in the Constitution. Meeting this challenge implies that to:

  • Make quality and social justice the central theme of curricular reform. Citizenship training has been an important aspect of formal education
  • Discourse of universal human rights and the approaches associated with critical pedagogy
  • Orientation towards values associated with peace and harmonious coexistence is not only desirable but also essential
  • Quality in education includes a concern for quality of life in all its dimensions
  • Protection of the environment and a predisposition towards social change must be viewed as core components of quality, not merely as value premises

Appreciation of Art

Education must provide the means and opportunities to enhance the child's creative expression and the capacity for aesthetic appreciation. Education for aesthetic appreciation and creativity is even more important today when aesthetic gullibility allows for opinion and taste to be manufactured and manipulated by market forces. The effort should be to enable the learner to appreciate beauty in its several forms. (Adopted from NCF 2005)

Conformity with the Right to Education Act 2009

Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE Act) which advocates that “No child shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent her from pursuing and completing the elementary education. No child can be refused admission on any grounds and will be admitted to her age appropriate class and have a right to receive special training so that the child can cope with the current curriculum. Education will be inclusive and the schools are supposed to make appropriate arrangements for children with disabilities and with special needs.”

Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE Act) - Chapter -V

Delineates explicit terms related to Curriculum and the evaluation procedures thus ensuring a clear focus on the quality of elementary education. It states that an academic authority, to be specified by the appropriate Government, by notification, shall lay down the curriculum and the evaluation procedure for elementary education. The academic authority, while laying down the curriculum and the evaluation procedure shall take into consideration the following:

a). Conformity with the values enshrined in the constitution

b). All round development of the child

c). Building up child's knowledge, potentiality and talent

d). Development of physical and mental abilities to the fullest extent

e). Learning through activities, discovery and exploration in a Child friendly and child centered manner

f). Medium of instructions shall, as far as practicable, be in child's mother tongue

g). Making the child free of fear, trauma and anxiety and helping the child to express views freely

h). Comprehensive and continuous evaluation of child's understanding of knowledge and her ability to apply the same

Conformity to the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), 2005

The National Curriculum Framework is a detailed and intricate outlay that covers the various parameters and guidelines for designing/prescribing a well-rounded curriculum. It is an outcome of valuable research of many a revered subject matter experts and educators. During the process of curriculum design for American High School Diploma Program, due thought and effort has been invested to make sure that NCF remains our guiding document.

Our Academic Council is a congregation of experienced and passionate academic professionals who have collectively worked on various facets of curriculum & syllabus at multiple times and points in their careers. Growth & Development, Inclusiveness, Knowledge and Learning of the child are 4 pillars on which the entire curriculum evolved.

The major outline of the division of K12 education in 4 broad categories, as followed by us and mentioned in NCF 2005 is specified in following section.