Introduction
The students nowadays not only write board, JEE, NDA, NEET, etc. but also SRM JEE, Manipal JEE, and any university that's deemed. Finally the child's psyche is doomed. Gone are those days when we wrote boards at SSLC, PUC, BSc, MSc levels and still got admissions at each stage based on the board/ university grades at the previous level and our generation has served the country fairly well. I don't know why a child should be tested so many times with greatest of penalties. On one side there are counselors who have taken cudgels claiming to removing exam stress. The boards respond by deleting, irrationally reducing syllabus. The entrance exams play havoc by reintroducing deleted topics and more, plus penalizing about which the counselor intellectuals are silent or perhaps unaware since they stop at the board level. Thus the coaching centers with half baked programs fleece the parents who feel, if they pay the fee to one of them, their duty is over. It has become a menace all around. Plus munnaboy's success has led to paper leaks and impersonations!
Children tortured thus, to secure an admission to a course lose interest in the under-graduate level and just scrape through instead of learning skills and concepts for real life contribution.
Burning answer to a burning question is to strengthen the board examinations by empowering them to take full responsibility and accountability by improving their reliability. Some implementable strategies and recommendations are therefore in order. Here I endeavour to discuss the rationale of question banks as an effective but enjoyable tool for attaining competency to face any type of questions currently in vogue, that are considered as suitable for assessing qualification to admissions in higher learning institutions.
Since my subject is mathematics it would be the Rationale of question banks with special emphasis on mathematics.
Need for a Question Bank
Subject, pun unintended:
Mathematics is a subject with the highest casualty in the board examinations. High pass percentage is a far cry with a few schools showing as low as 50-60% pass percentage. In general, the trend is attributed to the subject being a difficult one. We justify it as mathematical phobia and with a remark, “Mathematics is not everybody’s cup of tea” isolate the subject and its exponents giving them an elite status. Once alienated from the elite the normal student distances from the subject adding to the group of low achievers.
Teacher:
But a teacher cannot afford to give up on the group as though no course correction is possible to a natural gift. If such is the case the term education will lose its meaning.
The extant practices in assessment emphasize on a peer group comparative. If we were to bring more into the group of achievers in any subject the first step is to avoid peer
group placement and take up increasing skills and competencies on a vertical time frame for each individual.
Such individualization is the most ideal situation and easier said than done in the scenario of mass education.
Just like the time frame continuum is divided in terms of karma or actions divide the students in terms of topics of prescribed syllabus and gauge the difficulty levels in terms of achieved/not achieved. The teacher needs a tool to segregate. Thus enters the concept of question banks.
Areas to be explored
Mathematicians claim that their subject is the queen of sciences. In fact, a friend of mine a professor of chemistry said that his subject claimed that status. Though I haven’t heard from any physics patriot make any such claims yet there are ample instances in which one can stake such claims. In fact, as you move higher in the vertical ladder of learning you come to realize that the boundaries are seamless between subjects or disciplines as we call them.
Mathematicians claim that it is omnipresent from art to music, from physics to chemistry, from
history to geography, from commerce to economics. In fact, what is omnipresent is this physical world and its various phenomena. Quantification being a natural instinct of living beings, mathematics is an integral part of all physical phenomena. Though at an experiential level quantification may not be essential, it does help understanding the
experience so as to see the parts of the whole, leading to research and replication, construction, modification and evolution.
When the learner is tested, he has to read, comprehend holistically, by analysis and synthesis. This would help him to identify, locate that perspective of a single or a sequence of principles that would help him solve the problem. At school level, in mathematics I propound a four-point strategy.
I. Language Ability:
Understanding the problem situation requires understanding the language of the problem.
Language in this case involves the ordinary and the mathematical. Hence of development of language ability should comprise questions involving:
Translation of ordinary sentences into mathematical sentences and vice versa. The typology may be:
Statements for reasoning, true or false, multiple choice,
Statements to equations or inequations and vice versa.
Translation of ordinary language into figures in geometry, trigonometry, coordinate geometry and vice versa.
Definitions for holistic connections with the perspectives that they cover in a nutshell.
Example: Draw the figure for the following problem:
In triangle ABC, AD median, DE and DF angular bisectors of angles ADB and ADC respectively. Prove that EF ll BC.
II. Diagnosis:
Identifying and sequencing concepts, principles, with specific perspectives if there are more than one. These may be
Axiom whole or part of it,
Definition whole or a part of it,
Formulae,
Theorems,
Algebraic identities,
Associated symbols,
Questions should not focus on the whole solution but only in identifying and sequencing the necessary principles/formulae.
Sequencing is a better aid for critical thinking if the student is trained to think from the result required to the given data.
Jumble the steps and test sequencing ability
Pointing odd man out or superfluous data from the set of the steps of the solution
identifying and sequencing the theorems/formulae to be used in the problem
Example: Identify and sequence the theorems to be used in the following problem:
In triangle ABC, AD median, DE and DF angular bisectors of angles ADB and ADC respectively. Prove that EF ll BC.
III. Numerical Ability:
Involves testing speed and accuracy. Questions may include:
Recognizing patterns, unique/standard figures, sums, products, squares, cubes, square roots, cube roots.
On operations of fractions and decimal fractions
Logarithms,
Mental sums,
Objective type,
Rapid fire questions
IV. Analytical Thinking (Analysis and synthesis):
Reasoning is a mathematical necessity. Harnessed horses syndrome will not make the top notch. These questions will be long answer type of questions. Questions may focus on:
Splitting up of Given vs to prove/to find,
Splitting up of Logical stages
Summing up
Class-wise tasks in preparing question banks
The first step in this task is to conduct a diagnostic test for peer group classification that would provide a parameter/bench mark for levels of question banks. This aspect is covered in the first point in each of the following class-wise recommendations of tasks:
Class VI:
Primary in middle perspective (questions on essential skills and competencies at primary level essential for the middle classes.
Question banks unit wise in class VI.
Questions across related units (fusion of concepts across units).
Class VII:
Revision of essential topics of class VI as required for vertical mobility in related areas in class VII.
Question banks unit wise in class VII.
Questions across related units (fusion of concepts across units).
Class VII in class IX perspective, employing Activity based, experimental methods instead of analytical methods.
Class VIII:
Revision of essential topics of class VII as required for vertical mobility in related areas in class VIII.
Question banks unit wise in class VIII.
Questions across related units (fusion of concepts across units).
Class VIII in class X perspective, employing Activity based, experimental methods instead of analytical methods.
Classes IX and X:
Revision of essential topics of class VII as required for vertical mobility in related areas in class VI- VIII.
Class IX in class XI perspective and X in XII perspective leaving open ended hooks to expand later.
Question banks unit wise in class IX and X.
Questions across related units (fusion of concepts across units).
Question papers on board pattern.
Question banks for under achievers if they still exist even after a sincere attempt by teachers of the middle schools to maintain zero failure.
Question banks for gifted learners for quality.
Question banks for continued quality improvement: from fail-pass; pass -60%; 60%-80%; 80%-100%.
Question banks on the first three of the four-point strategy for formative learning and for vii) above.
Classes XI and XII:
Revision of essential topics of class IX and X as required for vertical mobility in related areas in class XI- XII especially taking up the relevant question banks prepared for class IX in XI perspective and class X in XII perspective.
Question banks unit wise in class XI and XII.
Questions across related units (fusion of concepts across units.
Question papers on board pattern.
Question banks for under achievers if they still exist even after a sincere attempt by teachers of the middle and secondary schools to maintain zero failure.
Question banks for gifted learners for quality in the perspectives of NDA, JEE, NEET etc.
Question banks for continued quality improvement: from fail-pass; pass -60%; 60%-80%;80%-100%.
Question banks on the first three of the four-point strategy for formative learning and for above.
Important Recommendations
These are consolidated on the basis of my experience:
As a teacher of Mathematics from classes IV to XII in my career of 35 of years in the field.
As a teacher of all subjects up to secondary classes for my children and grand children.
As a teacher of mathematics in respect of my children in classes XI and XII.
As a teacher of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology in respect of my grand children in classes XI and XII.
Of perusing the examination patterns in NDA, JEE and NEET and elucidating that they are within the syllabus but for the typology of questions that require an astronomical jump in processing data towards solution of problems.
Having experienced that the children do not take the classes IX &XI seriously due to the absence of board examinations that form more than 50% of the entrance examinations thus becoming the feeders for the vying coaching centers to thrive.
The corona drive of irrational deletions in the name of rationalization.
For example in mathematics,
many concepts of tangents and normal are omitted in geometry and coordinate geometry.
Many useful formulae regarding solution of triangles are removed from trigonometry.
Equations reducible to quadratic equations, using sum and product of roots and many others which alone figure in the entrance examinations.
Recommendations
The prescribed syllabus and its transaction levels should be clearly laid down.
The prescribed text book should be absolutely reconciled to 1 above so that they are reliable both for the teacher and the student to face any examination in the syllabus.
The deletions should be fine-tuned to remove only repetitive topics and not curtail important extensions of a single concept that are included for entrance examinations.
Let the school syllabus be an integrated whole.
Help the child so that he is not compelled to seek assistance from outside agencies.
In the new system of classes IX to XII board examinations are to be held every year. The question paper must be made to assess what children know and not to know what they don’t know.
5 - 10% of the questions should be preparatory for the national entrance exams standards.
Weightages can be determined for each of these by experts for a final score. However, I feel it should be 1 : 1 : 1 : 1.
The NTA/NDA should take cognizance of the prescribed syllabus by the boards and their prescriptions should be strictly in tandem with that.
The system of penalty for wrong answers should be totally done away with. It is punitive and against educational psychology.
Especially when the levels are already made higher by providing less time for more questions. For example, in NDA, a child has to answer two papers of 120 questions of mathematics in two and a half hours and 150 questions across English, physics, chemistry, biology, social sciences again in two and a half hours.
The school system including administrators and teachers must be strengthened and equipped adequately to enable the student to be holistically and eminently qualified for all types of examinations.
Thus, it would be able to earn the trust of students and parents.
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