Reimagining and Reinventing Board Examinations

In the academic stream of class XII, CBSE offers about 42 subjects, 39 languages of which 12 are foreign languages; in the vocational stream 30 courses comprising combinations of three main subjects. In class X apart from the three main subjects, the languages are 39, with additional subjects give or take a few. The board folds these in a frame of 45 examination days and almost all examination centres make available the physical infrastructure and the human resources to conduct these examinations during that period.

Having been an insider I know the rigmarole that went into making it happen. The meticulous planning, mobilization of human resources for all allied activities, disseminating instructions for a flawless, time bound execution of the task was indeed a great experience to watch and learn. The entire exercise was nothing less than a war exercise absolutely professional ensuring checks and balances on all counts.

If corona stole the pleasure of students taking the examinations they had been preparing for, I would say it equally took away the pleasure of conducting them for the board.

Assessing without a Board Examination

Preparing an alternative scheme of evaluation by taking school level inputs has some serious disadvantages.

Certain school organizations that are systemically sound with standard practices will atleast have to some extent, reasonably reliable records. But there are as many schools that are not entirely following any set of periodic assessment schedules. Some just field candidates who are not even regular attendees but who tie up with several coaching centres. Hence definitely one would look askance regarding their educational practices, more so the reliability of any assessments they may send in respect of their candidates. A board examination could have given an unbiased evaluation of the student standards on a uniform benchmark.

There are considerations of taking projections of class 10 results. Even if it is the board exam assessment there is no parity between the course content of class X and that of class XII. Students have diversified, chosen different combinations of subjects that would really not compare with their performance of a general course common to all students in X grade, especially in respect of the denseness and the depth levels of knowledge construction at plus 2 level. Not all students who scored well in class X repeat the same in class XII. Conversely there are students whose performance was moderate in class X but who excel when they study the subjects chosen commensurate with their aptitude, in class XII.

The Government’s decision not to hold examinations has met with an unopposed consensus. Though, the board has been left with taking a responsibility with no support whatsoever to come out with a scheme that would be objective, reliable, statistically sound supported by documentary evidence and what not for giving a satisfactory assessment of all students! It is totally an unjust expectation when especially as has been analyzed there are no monitored standard practices by the vast number of schools inspite of a uniform syllabus, guiding circulars, sample papers etc. The students themselves are in pursuit of career choices and hence follow their own priorities.

Hence if we are to come out with assessment without exams let us be prepared for some surgical strikes. An extraordinary situation calls for extraordinary measures. Let us have an onboarding of all stake holders. That would include the exam boards, parents and higher education institutes. The parents should be ready to mentally sign an indemnity. The higher educational institutes and universities should adopt an entirely new paradigm for their admissions. There was a news item that some private institutes are admitting students on the basis of class IX merit for 6- year BTech courses. It is clear that they have taken the onus of preparing them for a focused education.

• The board should declare all the students registered with them passed and eligible for admission to colleges without any marks.

• The parents should allow their children to choose the colleges as per their career interests and aptitudes.

• The colleges may have questionnaires that would evaluate suitability of candidates where they may also call for their consistency in performance of related subjects in the lower classes including the X board.

• There may be some students who have already cleared NDA etc.

The Road Ahead

Given the never-ending mutations of corona one could never predict when the pandemic would end and normalcy would be restored. Yet another academic year has commenced and education is still online and in the digital mode.

It is high time we made a departure from the routine and ventured new paradigms in examination models too.

Based on my field experience in various capacities from a teacher to an administrator in school organizations, I feel the following suggestions would be well within the scope of the different institutions responsible for school education and feasible to be conducted online with minimum exposure of children to the pandemic.

• Have differential models for testing languages taken at the core level and other subjects. There is no need for the board to test the textual content. The different skills can be tested with unknown passages/poems, keeping in view the syllabus levels of vocabulary, idiomatic and other usages, grammar. Even an online examination taken at home will have almost nil scope for any malpractice.

• There is a section of students who may not have adequate internet facilities. The boards with appropriate government collaboration could send mobile units to such zones for facilitating the process. Instead of an outright rejection of the suggestion with “oh! It is easy to say”, we could arrange for getting statistical input of requirement vis-à-vis mobilization of task forces and examine the feasibility. In pandemic situations centres could be set up in containment zones which are readily mapped. The current year class XII students should all be systematically vaccinated. For a nation that has conducted such a huge exercise as elections during the pandemic these arrangements should not be too difficult.

• Mention has to be made regarding literature students for whom certain textual portions may be mandatory such as plays, novels, poems etc. These could also be tested for a critical appreciation than direct content-based questions so as to maintain the sanctity of an examination with minimal supervision.

• In respect of other subjects, (subject to discipline specific variations in analogous situations) one way of categorizing the levels and typology of questions could be

• A weighted average model is suggested to make board examination the one-time basis for admissions to higher education. Each student should get all the three weighted averages.

• If a student gets 15, 12, 10 respectively in the three parts the weighted average will be 41%; 36%; 34.2% in the three categories.

• Further for internal assessment by schools, the board may come out with a question bank concept maintained confidential and made available to schools online, on a tri-annual basis for one third of the syllabus. The question banks should be programmed to automatically generate permutations of a definite number of questions. A uniform time schedule could help even the ghost schools to arrange for conducting these exams for the candidates enrolled with them.

• Last but not least the government should come out with free distribution of laptops of just adequate capacity for poor children who could not afford such facilities. Since current remote-learning already depends upon Google Classroom, these laptops can be Chromebooks, which are much cheaper than regular laptops and fully integrated with the Google universe. This is also the current solution the public schools in the United States of America are following.