How to Choose a Cambridge AS and A Level School in North India: One Parent’s Search Across Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab
The coordinator at the school in Jaipur handed me a thin booklet, not the glossy brochure I’d been given at the CBSE school the previous week. She opened it to a page with a simple grid. “In the first term, we focus on two things,” she said. “Getting your son comfortable with asking questions, and getting him comfortable with not knowing the answer.” My son, sitting beside me, looked up from his phone. That was probably the first sign.
We had spent two months visiting schools across Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab. Our plan seemed straightforward: shift our son to a school offering Cambridge AS and A levels after his Class 10 boards. At every school, I asked the same questions—class size, results, fees, and how many students got into top universities. The answers varied, but the presentations didn’t. Until this visit, nobody had talked about what the first few months might actually feel like for a sixteen-year-old who had spent years memorising textbook summaries.
That conversation in Jaipur changed how I looked at everything after it. We drove back to our hotel and I made notes, but they weren’t about the campus or the sports complex. I wrote down the coordinator’s exact words: “If your son can sit with a problem for twenty minutes without asking for the formula, he’ll be fine.” That sounded simple. But back at home, when my son couldn’t solve a math problem for ten minutes, he’d normally come straight to me. I wasn’t sure if either of us was ready.
Over the next few weeks, we visited schools in Chandigarh, Ludhiana, and Gurgaon. Some were brand new, with glass walls and international accreditation posters. Others were older institutions that had added the Cambridge curriculum alongside their existing board. We met parents, talked to teachers, and sat in on a few classrooms. One thing became clear: Cambridge AS and A level is less about the syllabus itself and more about how the school treats the learning process. That’s the factor that seemed to matter more than anything else.
In the Cambridge system, students take an AS level in the first year, followed by the A level in the second. Many schools in North India offer this route now, partly because the new National Education Policy has made things less rigid, but mostly because parents are looking for alternatives. What surprised me was that a good school for Cambridge isn’t necessarily the one with the best results. It’s the one where teachers are allowed to slow down. One principal in Haryana told me, “We don’t cover everything. We make sure they understand what we do cover.”
That was refreshing, but also unsettling. My son had been trained to finish chapters on schedule. When we spoke to a teacher at a school in Punjab, she explained that AS level exams are often taken at the end of Class 11, then A level at the end of Class 12. “The pace is slower, but the depth is deeper,” she said. “He’ll have to write longer answers, evaluate evidence, and sometimes disagree with a textbook. That transition is harder than most parents realise.”
The practical question then becomes: how do you know which school will actually do that, and not just say it? After our visits, I’ve learned a few specific things to look for. The first is to ask for the timetable of one Class 11 student. Not a model student, just a regular one. If the school hesitates, that’s a sign. We did this at one school in Gurgaon and discovered a week with only twenty-eight teaching periods, but three compulsory “study halls” where students were expected to be alone with their materials. The coordinator said this builds independent learning. That might be true, but my son needs more structure, not less. So that school went off the list.
The second thing is to ask about teacher turnover. At every school, we asked how many teachers had been there for more than three years. The answer told us more than any brochure. One school in Rajasthan had a wonderful set of faculty profiles, but the principal admitted that the senior economics teacher was leaving at the end of the term. We later learned that the school had been through four economics teachers in two years. Cambridge students need continuity, especially with coursework and long-term preparation. A school that can’t retain teachers will struggle to support a student through both years.
The third thing is to ask how they handle the first term. A good Cambridge school knows that students coming from CBSE or ICSE often struggle with the freedom. The coordinator we met in Jaipur said that her school runs a short “unlearning” course in the first month. They teach students how to take notes, how to find sources, and how to disagree politely in a seminar. That sounded gimmicky to me at first. But when we spoke to a father in Chandigarh whose daughter had just finished her first year, he said something similar. “For the first two months, she was lost. Then she started sending us newspaper articles asking if we’d read them. That never happened before.”
Of course, location and fees matter. We live in a city where options are limited, so we’re also considering schools in other states. The fees for Cambridge AS and A level schools in North India range from around four lakh to nine lakh per year. That’s not cheap. Some schools include exam fees and study abroad trips in the total; others don’t. We built a spread sheet with all the costs, and it helped us think clearly. But the real differentiator, we found, is the school’s relationship with the students’ parents. The best schools ask for patience, not just payment. They explain that results don’t improve overnight, and that the first year of AS level is about developing a different set of habits. If a school promises a fixed score or a guaranteed university placement, we’ve learned to be suspicious.
Our search is still on. We’ve shortlisted two schools—one in Haryana, one in Rajasthan. Each has its own strengths. The one in Haryana has a more established science program, which matters to my son. The one in Rajasthan has a younger faculty, but they seemed more interested in how he thinks rather than what he already knows. My son still isn’t sure which one feels right. Last week, he said, “At the Rajasthan school, they asked me a question I couldn’t answer. That was weird. But I kept thinking about it.” I think I know what he’s trying to say. The school that makes a student uncomfortable in the right way might be the right school.
We haven’t decided yet, and that’s okay. The Cambridge route isn’t a shortcut. It’s a different path, one that requires more from the student and more from the school. The coordinator in Jaipur was right about one thing. The first year is about learning how to learn. Now we just have to find the place where that lesson is actually taught.
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