Calcutta, July 3 :    Calcutta, July 3:  Alarmed at the steady slide of their students on the Madhyamik and Higher Secondary merit lists, private English medium schools in the city and elsewhere in Bengal have begun moves to switch affiliation to all-India systems like ICSE, ISC and CBSE. The leading schools' efforts intensified a day after the Tuesday shock, which saw only five students from Calcutta institutions find a place in the 2002 HS Top 20. Their efforts came amid murmurs of biased assessment against examinees from city schools. None of the principals who has approached the government for no-objection certificates - without which a private school cannot seek affiliation from an out-of-the-state board - was willing to go on record. But in private, almost all of them said they were planning to make the switch because apart from the lopsided assessment system, guardians were clamouring for modern courses that would prepare their wards for national-level competitive exams. 'Those who want to acquire skills in handling the English language are finding the Madhyamik and HS courses inadequate. The pressure from parents is very high,' one of the principals said. The government has dropped its earlier reservation on this issue and decided to allow the switchover in a controlled manner for the sake of the reforms programme it has undertaken. Last week, it gave the no-objection certificate to Modern High School for Girls, one of Calcutta's better known institutions. The certificate, a copy of which is with The Telegraph, requires Modern High to reserve 10 per cent of its seats in every academic year for students recommended by the government and provide free education to 50 per cent of such students. St Xavier's Collegiate School is another prominent institution that has dropped the Madhyamik course after running it simultaneously along with the ICSE system. Sources close to Loreto House said some parents have written to the school authorities and asked for a replacement of the existing HS syllabus with the Indian School Certificate course. 'A number of well-known English medium schools has applied for permission for leaving the state boards and become affiliates of all-India boards, especially the one conducting the Central Board of Secondary Education,' said school education minister Kanti Biswas. Biswas said his government supports the trend as this could in the long run help make its industrialisation policy a success. 'We in the government support them because we realise that more schools affiliated to other boards are also needed in the state. We are pursuing a policy of industrialisation for which we need to bring people over from other states and offer them opportunities to educate their children in schools of their choice. No school seeking a no-objection certificate will be denied permission if it fulfils the terms and conditions fixed by the government,' he added. Noticing the trend, authorities of at least 100 upcoming English medium schools, the bulk of which are in the city, have approached the government for permission to start off as affiliates of the all-India systems.