Hyderabad: From small towns to mandal headquarters, budget private schools across Telangana are racing to adopt the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) curriculum, tapping into parents’ growing anxieties over their children’s future and the promise of “all-round development”.

In past two to three years, an estimated 500 to 600 schools have applied for No-Objection Certificates (NOCs) to shift from the state syllabus to CBSE, a move rapidly reshaping the school education landscape. While managements project the transition as beneficial, it also comes with a steep hike in fees, often 1.5 to 2 times higher than those under the SSC system.

Parents drive the shift

“Post-pandemic, parents are no longer looking at marks alone. They want overall development and are increasingly moving away from the state syllabus, still largely based on rote learning,” said Shekar Rao Y, Telangana Recognised School Management Association president. “This is driving hundreds of schools in districts and mandals to move to CBSE.”

Telangana has about 8,000 to 10,000 private budget schools where annual fees in rural areas range between ₹20,000 and ₹35,000. Once a school shifts to CBSE, fees rise to at least ₹50,000 even in rural pockets. The CBSE label gives schools an edge as parents widely perceive them to offer better infrastructure, trained teachers and a curriculum aligned with competitive exams.

“It is primarily because of pressure from parents that I applied for an NOC to offer the CBSE curriculum,” said Sharath Kumar Surabhi, who has been running Vidhya Bharathi High School at Tandur for the past 30 years.

Demand for CBSE schools has spread even to villages and mandals, he said. His school with over 1,700 students has applied to switch to CBSE from 2026-27.

Better handholding

School managements say the CBSE framework offers better institutional support not just for students but for teachers too, citing regular reforms, regional offices and structured training programmes.

“In state syllabus, there is little monitoring. CBSE gives us a better platform,” said IV Ramana who runs New Era School in Khammam and applied for an NOC during the 2025-26 academic year. “For parents, CBSE is a minimum guarantee that a school will have decent facilities and qualified teachers.”

Under CBSE norms, a school requires at least half an acre of land in cities like Hyderabad and a minimum two acres in rural areas along with playgrounds, labs and adequate teaching staff. Managements cite these to justify higher fees.

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