The Equivalence Handover: AIU, UGC and PARAKH, and Why Nobody Can Give You a Straight Answer

If you have tried to find out who grants an equivalence certificate in India this year, you have probably been given at least two different answers, both confidently, and both with an official-looking source. You are not being misinformed. The function genuinely moved twice inside twelve months, and one of the bodies involved has not updated its own website.

This piece sets out what changed, where the official positions contradict each other, and — the part you will not find elsewhere — what is already working in practice ahead of the paperwork. If you just want to know which body to apply to, we have a direct answer page on who issues equivalence certificates. This is the longer story of how it got confusing, and where it is going.

What changed, and when

Two separate transfers happened, in opposite directions, covering different kinds of qualification. Conflating them is the single biggest source of the confusion.

The cleanest way to hold it in your head: NCERT, through PARAKH, is for Indian school boards. UGC is for anything foreign. The one case that rule does not settle is a foreign board sat at a centre inside India — an IGCSE or IB taken in Bengaluru — which we come back to below; do not assume either desk until you have asked. PARAKH is the National Assessment Centre set up under NEP 2020, and the government describes its remit as covering equivalence "for the purpose of admission of students to higher education institutions and employment under the Central Government, State Governments and Union Territories".

The contradiction, in the two bodies' own words

Checked on 15 August 2026, AIU's equivalence page still describes the Association as "vested with the power of according academic equivalence to the degrees obtained from the accredited foreign Boards/universities", and still advertises the specific service that moved:

Equivalence Certificate is issued for the students having completed their School Level Examinations from Foreign Boards.

There is no notice on that page about the UGC regulations, the September 2025 gazette, or PARAKH. Meanwhile UGC runs a live equivalence portal whose own regulations state that they "shall not apply to professional qualifications awarded by foreign educational institutions in disciplines like Medicine, Pharmacy, Nursing, Law, and Architecture" — those stay with their statutory councils.

So a family reading AIU's site gets one answer, a family reading UGC's portal gets another, and both pages are live and official. Admission offices quote whichever they found first.

Where the public record goes quiet

Worth stating plainly, because it explains why searching harder will not resolve this. PARAKH's own public page on the equivalence initiative describes its methodology — Question Paper Templates, an Equivalence Questionnaire, and analysis across five domains: Administration, Assessment, Curriculum, Infrastructure and Inclusiveness — and notes that India has 69 boards, "state, central, and international". It does not state the date of its mandate, and it does not say whether international boards fall inside its scope or UGC's.

That is the crux of the unresolved case, and it affects a lot of our readers: a Cambridge IGCSE or IB Diploma taken at a centre inside India. The awarding body is foreign. The candidate is in India. Nothing we can find in the public record cleanly assigns that combination to UGC or to PARAKH.

UGC does grant Grade 10 equivalence — the documentation just has not caught up

Here is the part you will not find on a government page, and it is the most useful thing on this one. UGC is issuing equivalence for Class 10 IGCSE, and families have completed the process in 2026. This is not a rumour or an inference from the regulations — it is established by people who have been through it and hold the certificate.

It also fits the published framework, once you read the regulations rather than the summaries. Clause 3(5) says a qualification from a School in a foreign country "shall be accepted for determining equivalence for the purpose of admission to undergraduate and equivalent programmes" — the enumerated route is written around Class 12 and university entry. But clause 3(6) then adds "Any other conditions as may be decided by the Commission from time to time", and the Commission may relax conditions. The Class 10 route is not excluded by the text; it simply is not the case the text was drafted around.

The portal corroborates this. UGC does not run one equivalence desk — it runs two, and publishes separate contact channels for them: higher education on 011-23604137 and `equivalence-cell@ugc.gov.in`, and school education on 011-23604520 and `equivalence@ugc.gov.in`. A body that had nothing to do at school level below Class 12 would not staff a distinct school-education line.

So the honest position is not "this might work". It is: the route works and is in use, but you will be navigating it without a published how-to. Expect to explain the process to admission staff who have not seen it before, and keep your correspondence, because you may be the first case a given institution has handled.

Why this matters most to private and online candidates

Under the old arrangement, the hardest group to place was the private candidate: the homeschooler or online-school learner who sat a Cambridge or IB examination without being enrolled at a conventional registered school. Recognition guidance has historically been written around candidates entered through an affiliated school, which left privately-entered and online learners negotiating case by case.

The regulations shift the test in a way that helps exactly this group. Clause 3(5)(c) asks that "the School where the student was imparted education, as well as the school-leaving examination thereafter, has been recognised by the relevant Board in the foreign country." That is a question about whether your school is a registered Cambridge centre and whether Cambridge recognises the examination — not about whether it looks like a conventional bricks-and-mortar Indian school. A registered online Cambridge school can meet that test. And Class 10 IGCSE equivalence being granted now shows the machinery running in the case that used to be hardest.

Two things to check rather than assume. The regulations define a "School" as one "recognised and established or incorporated by any legal manner in a foreign country", which raises a real question for an online Cambridge provider incorporated in India even though the awarding body is British. And clause 3(4) excludes anything "obtained from any campus or institution under or through a Franchising arrangement" — worth knowing which side of that line your provider sits on before you enrol.

This is the clarity families have been missing, so it is worth stating plainly: private candidates, including those studying through online schools, do obtain UGC equivalence certificates, and that certificate is what Indian universities rely on — provided the school meets the conditions in clause 3(5), namely that it and its school-leaving examination are recognised by the relevant Board abroad and it is not a franchise arrangement. Establishing the qualification as equivalent is the certificate's entire statutory purpose: clause 3(5) issues it "for the purpose of admission to undergraduate and equivalent programmes of study in a higher educational institution in India". Once you hold it, your IGCSE or A Level stands where a CBSE or ISC certificate does.

The condition is worth reading as a checklist rather than a warning, because it is the difference between the families for whom this works and the ones it does not. A learner entered through a registered Cambridge school clears it. A learner with no school at all behind the entry, or one whose provider turns out to be a franchise or an India-incorporated body that the regulation's definition of "School" may not cover, has a question to resolve before planning admissions around the route. Ask your provider which registered centre enters you, and keep the answer.

What remains is ordinary admissions, not a recognition question. A university can still require particular subjects, a minimum aggregate, or an entrance examination — exactly as it does for a CBSE applicant. That is a different thing from doubting whether your qualification counts, and the two used to get tangled together for private candidates. They no longer need to be.

What to do now

1. Work out which lane your qualification is in: Indian board means PARAKH, foreign board sat abroad means UGC. Do not apply to both hoping one answers. The exception is a foreign board sat at an Indian centre — for that, ask before you file, because no public document assigns it.
2. Ask the receiving institution — the university, the school, the employer — to name in writing which body's certificate it requires. Their requirement governs, not the general rule.
3. If anyone cites AIU, ask which 2025 or 2026 instrument they are relying on. The AIU page alone is no longer sufficient authority for a school-level foreign qualification.
4. For an in-India Cambridge or IB sitting, ask both the awarding body and the receiving institution, and keep the replies. This is the genuinely unresolved case.
5. Budget time, not just fees. UGC describes a standing committee deciding applications within 10 days; treat any much longer quoted timeline as a question to ask rather than a fact to accept.

This is general information, not legal advice, and this is the fastest-moving area we cover. Rules, portals and responsibilities have changed twice since late 2025 and may change again — verify your current position with the relevant body and the institution you are applying to before you act on anything here, including this article.

Does any of this affect NIOS?

Not its recognition. NIOS is an Indian board whose examining authority rests on a Government of India resolution dated 14 September 1990. What changed is which body certifies equivalence between Indian boards — that is now NCERT through PARAKH — rather than whether NIOS itself is recognised.

Is my existing AIU equivalence certificate still valid?

Certificates already issued were issued under the framework in force at the time. The transfers concern who issues new ones. If an institution challenges an existing certificate, ask it to put the objection in writing and cite its basis.

Who decides equivalence for an IGCSE taken in Bengaluru?

Genuinely unclear on the public record. The awarding body is foreign, which points to UGC; the candidate sat in India, and PARAKH's remit covers boards operating here. We could not find a document resolving it, so ask both the receiving institution and the awarding body.

Can an online or private Cambridge candidate get equivalence?

Yes. Private candidates, including those studying through online schools, obtain UGC equivalence certificates, and Indian universities rely on that certificate for admission. The regulation's test is whether your school and its school-leaving examination are recognised by the relevant Board abroad, not whether you attended a conventional campus. Make sure your provider is a registered Cambridge centre and not a franchise arrangement, which clause 3(4) excludes.