WHO GETS 99.75% MARKS IN BOARD EXAMINATIONS?

Last week a friend of mine posted in his Facebook page that their darling daughter passed her Board examinations with flying colours and managed to score 99.75%! The first thing that occurred to me was who was the miserly fellow who pinched 0.25% and why? Really, 99.75%, is that humanly possible? Being from the era when the Board topper scored around 85% in Science stream and around 78% in Arts stream, 99.75% seemed astronomical. As neither of my two sons were exactly Albert Einstein so I was quite unfamiliar with these high scores but the fact that some colleges in Delhi University had cut-off score of around 98% was not unknown to me. So I knew this species exists, but it forced me to do some research.

 

Now hold your breath as I reveal to you the results of my research! The number of students who have scored above 95% in this year’s CBSE Class 12 Board Examinations is over 70,000! This is when the regular classes have gone for a toss this academic year because of the pandemic and the children were forced into the relatively new concept of Distance Learning. What is even more surprising is that that in 2019 i.e. before the pandemic this figure of 95% plus scores was around 17,000 and in 2020 it was 38,000. So as the days are going by the children are getting more and more comfortable with Distance Learning.

 

If you think that it is only the good students who are being benefited by Distance Learning and getting better and better marks, you are sadly mistaken; it seems everybody is doing well because nobody is failing! This year’s CBSE Class 12 pass percentage is 99.4%! The State Education Boards were equally generous – All 8 lakh children passed in Tamil Nadu Board (100%). Similarly Maharashtra Board passed 99.6% and U.P. Board was strict with only 98% pass percentage. What is going on? Should we be closing down the schools? Marks and pass percentages seem to suggest that real time schools have no role left and they do not matter. It also makes me wonder if marks have any value attached to them. The deluge of 90-plus scores makes it difficult to judge students, and hurts the truly deserving.

 

When we know that a very large section of the society from the lower socioeconomic strata did not possess either internet connection or a smart phone, this benevolence in marking exhibited by both CBSE and the State Boards is truly baffling. And it is not something we are seeing this year only; boards have been doling out marks rather generously for many years now. In the last five years, the pass percentage for Class XII exams conducted by the Council for the Indian School Certificate (ISC) has never dropped below 95%, while that of Tamil Nadu State Board has been above 90% since 2014. Other boards that consistently notch 80% and above in pass percentage are the Uttar Pradesh Board, Kerala Board and Central Board of Secondary Education, with West Bengal joining the league in 2015. Over the years, overzealous boards have decided to give an edge to their students, either for entrance examinations or for merit-based admissions.

 

So has the quality of learning really improved from the eighties and nineties? The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) in 2018 i.e. before the pandemic when children were going to school, showed that 24% in the 14-18 age group could not count currency correctly, 44% could not add weights correctly in kilograms as they were asked to add weights, 14% could not recognize a map of India and some 36% couldn’t name the capital of India. Similarly, while 79% could name the state they lived in, 58% could not locate it on a map. So how can this deluge of marks and these generous pass percentages be justified?

 

Marks are not for boasting, they have a very important purpose – admission to premier institutions for college education. A percentage is derived from the aggregate of top 4 subjects to bring out a merit list, and this obviously will be higher than the percentage scored in CBSE or Board exams. So how high do you think will the cut-off marks go for college admission? Delhi University has 69,554 seats sans reservation and only from CBSE Board this year there are more than 70,000 students with more than 95% marks! So now our children, even after scoring 95%, will have to grapple with uncertainty for their future and if they do not succeed to get admission to a decent college will be labelled as ‘a failure’! How can this be the future of brilliant students?

 

I am of the opinion that Board Examinations and Competitive examinations cannot replace one another. They have very different purposes. The board exam is used to assess how good a student is at the curriculum prescribed for the relevant classes; it is an achievement test. On the contrary, competitive examinations are a test for the elimination of weaker students. It has been seen in the past that many students who have done well in the board examinations may not do well in competitive examinations and vice versa. Therefore, using board exams alone as a means for admitting students to Delhi University or other colleges may not be ideal, since the exam is not designed for that objective. And for every course the students opt for, how can marks be the only criteria? If he/she does not have the aptitude for the course then even after acquiring the degree will they succeed in life? Or are we only interested in creating an army of unemployables?

 

This system of examination and marking desperately needs a second look. It is time to push the reset button and go back to the factory setting. The ‘marks’ must have an inherent value attached to them and they should reflect the quality of merit. Otherwise the list for college admission that is being prepared cannot be called a ‘merit list’. These Board examination results are, at best, bizarre and cannot be passed off as normal. When everybody passes, passing becomes irrelevant and when there are too many climbers reaching the summit, reaching the top loses its value.

 

Unlike what the results of this year’s Board examinations depict the truth is that young children have not just failed to learn for over 500 days now, but have forgotten what they knew earlier, and many of them have lapsed back into the darkness of illiteracy. The situation is even worse among the poors, rurals, Dalits and tribals. Whom are we kidding by doling out these marks? Why are we jeopardizing the future of our children and our country? A little ‘feel good’ today is not only unnecessary but downright harmful.  The National Education Council should step in to address the issue. Uniformity in marking among State Boards is essential. It is very important to have the concept of ‘one nation, one education board’ implemented in the country along with defined evaluation criteria to bring uniformity in the system. Only then can education be truly inclusive.

  

While I congratulate all those children who have succeeded in their Board examinations and scored heavily, I remain very concerned about their future. If we do not mend our ways these very children who are feeling good today will not pardon us for our act of benevolence in days to come.