New Delhi: About 50 schools in India may soon offer the international curriculum of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on a trial basis, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said on Tuesday.

Making the announcement here, the minister said the board's international curriculum, CBSE-I, will be for students opting for boards like the International Baccalaureate.

The international curriculum, available to students from Class 1 to 12, would be taught totally through e-books. The CBSE-I students would also have an edge over the normal CBSE course students as they would have more foreign languages and different syllabus for other subjects.

"This will be an option for students who want to go out of India for higher studies after Class 12," said Sibal.

CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi added that the course has already been started in about 25 schools in the Gulf and south Asian countries, and expression of interest has been invited from schools in India to start the course from the coming academic session.

"The pilot programme in India will include some Kendriya Vidyalayas and other government and private schools," Joshi said.

"Expression of interest has been invited from schools, it will be discussed and then the schools will be finalised," he said.

The government plans to launch the pilot programme in nearly 50 schools across India.

The annual course registration fee as proposed by the ministry is Rs.1.5 lakh.

Sibal said the course being totally online was a special feature of the CBSE-I and the government planned to expand this in coming days.

"We want to give Akash tablets in the hands of every student, then this will be useful," Sibal said.

The minister added that the attempt was to manufacture all components of Akash indigenously.

"We had a meeting with Bharat Electronics, we are looking for manufacturing all components of the Akash tablet indigenously. Otherwise, it will not be possible to distribute it as widely as planned," Sibal said. IANS