Too broad a question to answer.
I found this article an interesting read ->
http://www.livemint.com/2007/08/18001005/Which-school-are-you-in.htmlIt was interesting to read contrasting views as in:
[quote]At the conveniently located ?ole Mondiale World School at Juhu, there are few open spaces. But the classrooms are large, the corridors eye-catching and the laboratories gleaming (as parents will tell you, they allow nail polish and don?t insist on braided hair and, oh my god, what parties those kids have).[/quote]..and...
[quote]After all, as Prof. Ashok Korwar, previously of IIM Ahmedabad, says: ?India is not air conditioned. It?s bad for kids to be so coddled?they should be able to travel in a bus.? And eventually, the style of schooling affects larger issues. ?How are our kids going to slog to earn their living, to live without an AC, at least in the first few years, and to commute by local train, if they are brought up in such pampered surroundings?? points out Kavitha.[/quote]As for comparison, here is what I read
[quote]And finally, which is the better curriculum? IB/IGCSE or CBSE/ICSE? IB maybe the trendiest acronym in academics today, but it?s questionable whether the Geneva-based IB-trained kids can easily move to Indian colleges. After an IB, it?s difficult to get into the traditional college system and, indeed, almost all IB graduates go abroad.
But IB converts say it?s project-based learning over ?spit and rote?. Entrepreneur and investor Mahesh Murthy and poet wife Manisha Lakhe?s son Agni goes to the Cambridge IGCSE-affiliated Billabong International School in Mumbai. ?He wants to go to school on Sunday,? says Lakhe, explaining how stimulating studies can be. Agrees journalist Sunita Wadekar Bhargava, whose son Saahil studies in Class VIII at the city?s American International School: ?They learn integers and decimals through following the share prices of four stocks over three months, and now Saahil knows his numbers perfectly.? Says an enthusiastic Saahil: ?We do a lot of group projects. I did research on Wikipedia and made a PowerPoint on Amerigo Vespucci when we were studying European explorers; it was fun and my teacher loved it.?
Still, IB can get a little too international. Shalini Advani was principal of the British School, New Delhi, but her daughter Keya studied at the traditional Sardar Patel Vidyalaya: ?If you are Indian, you need to study Indian history in your growing years; you need to do Hindi seriously.? IB schools study world geography and history.
And the international school curriculum is far removed from the realities of competitive exams. For IIT-minded students such as Ishaan Sethi of DPS R.K. Puram, these schools don?t cut much ice. ?It looks like a resort,? he complains of a Gurgaon-based international school which he visited during an inter-school match. The Class XI student prefers his own school. ?The faculty is very academically-oriented,? he explains. ?We used to keep complaining about our class tests, but when it?s the end of February and your exams are two weeks away, you are so glad you had those monthly tests. Everything?s easy and at your fingertips.?
Traditional schools have these strengths, especially progressive ones such as Shri Ram and Sanskriti in New Delhi, Besant Montessori in Mumbai and Krishnamurthy Foundation?s ?The School? in Chennai. And they don?t have to be frogs in the well. As Advani points out: ?A good solid Indian school looks outward. It has its own way of being international.?
[/quote]It would be tough to compare these international systems with the traditional Indian systems yet. Not much is known yet about the graduates of these international systems. If someone had already posted on this, would love to review.
Syllabus -
http://www.cambridgestudents.org.uk/