The Question of Mandatory Class X Board Examination: CCE and its Aftermath

Note: Any gender reference applies equally to all gender equivalents.

The success of any scheme lies in understanding its import in respect of its true goals and the right path towards its attainment. Evolving the child to its maximum potential is the ultimate goal of any educational process. In this mission not a single child can be left behind in the garb of majority vs. minority. It is about each individual making progressive strides at a pace of his choice to know more “today than yesterday”. It is not a race in the peer group but a race within him.

The main mentors are the teachers and the other beneficiaries are the parents in the immediate vicinity and the society in the larger circle of the main beneficiary, the child. Out of these stakeholders the accountability of success or failure devolves solely on the teachers while the others have a comfortable position of demanding explanation in the eventuality of a failure.

The teachers have to bear the entire brunt of the consequences and rightfully so in view of the vows of their profession. We should appreciate that the golden age of Indian system of education had long since been throttled in the series of its subjugation under foreign rule. No longer is the empowerment of the guru for decisions on the paths of learning for the sishya complete. We do not anymore entrust the student to the teacher but continuously monitor seeking quantifiable results. To create a Chandragupta we need a Chanakya who had ruthlessly submitted his student to discover his potential from actual life experiences. He never advocated self pity as a component of all such processes but emphasized on sublimating each hardship by subsuming in the nobility of the goals.

We grudgingly admit that such total authority is impossible in the contemporary society, especially in the garb of protecting the child right we do not even allow him to be placed in any tough life situations replete with challenges. The least challenge of facing an examination too has been blunted due to intense social activism of a few vested interests trying to gain brownie points by exaggerating the examination pressures in the name of counseling solutions. When even simulation of real life situations may have controversial consequences of physical harm, atleast efforts should be maximized to equip the mind and strengthen the will to face challenges in real life.

Why is the reintroduction of class X board examination not detrimental to creativity in classrooms and how its reintroduction is overdue? These are the questions I would address now.

CCE as a concept is to enable a progressive learning curve against a time scale for each individual and not to locate him in the peer group achievement at a particular instant. The advocacy of an optional examination by NCF 2005 was more of an empowerment of deciding one’s pace for achievement rather than running a race in the peer group. However the pace cannot be too slow and hence a teacher stands to catalyze the process. Therefore it is more relevant as a pedagogic tool than as an evaluation tool, which is how it has been projected and practiced ever since its inception. Many a time in teacher training programmes it was found that the teachers had equated CCE to the new report card that the CBSE has devised. Unfortunately the assessment theories have ventured to separate the so called academic subjects from purportedly not so academic subjects. Further the idea of comprehensive evaluation has been leaning more towards the personality traits of the child evaluated in total isolation of their real contribution in the learning process. The report card that has emerged from all these is anything but comprehensive. It would be interesting to undertake a scientific and dispassionate analysis of the results over the 8 years and test their reliability in the vertical ladder of performance. Even a single year’s analysis of Kendriya Vidyalaya’s results had revealed gaping holes in the reliability. Just for a sample it had been seen that even children scoring 10 CGPA, the perfect score have failed to qualify in class XI.

What is the real comprehensive component? An objective view of the syllabus of the academic subjects will reveal their contribution to the personality development of a child and building a strong value system. The syllabi are mandatory in turning the child aware and articulate about the physical and the social world of which he is a potential member. They are intended to expose him to the knowledge evolved about them, to add and expand his skills of useful existence and automatically therefore his inherited personal endowments, genetic and otherwise become integral parts of the learning process. Thus learning is comprehensive when any knowledge acquired is the result of active participation of all the integral attributes of the learner.

Of all the parameters, knowing the individual child, his aptitudes, attitudes and his socio-economic background is the most challenging in the contemporary context of mass education. Individualization of instruction that would ensure proper accountability however is a tall order for the teaching fraternity which by its own dynamics is as varied in commitment and talent as the student community. Hence absolute empowerment of teachers by way of student assessment is bound to fall short by a wide margin vis-à-vis the expected standards of learner achievement. Such a suggestion generated a fear psychosis in teachers used hitherto to centralized instructions quantified for accountability.

The board started micromanaging the teachers’ task by prescribing standard operating procedures that were made an integral part of accountability exercises, mentoring, monitoring and so on and so forth. The whole was divided and subdivided and the parts never coalesced back. All these manuals were forced upon the teachers who were still not considered trustworthy. They were asked to write teacher efficiency test inspite of a B.Ed. The students whom they assessed were also not trusted and proficiency tests conducted by the board were made mandatory for the students to prove themselves.

Thus in order to avoid one board examination, there were several tests which still did not measure for remedial action. Some teachers misused the empowerment and the grades to malpractice. Some school organizations set common question papers or in other words several boards and several standards.

The appeasement for reducing the child’s burden, by splitting the syllabus into two halves had another evil byproduct. There are certain ghost schools that sponsor candidates (not students), there being no regular school premises or classes. They just send plastic grades for 70% of the class X course, facilitating the child to appear for one board examination of SA II in half syllabus for the remaining 30%, thereby leaving him unaware of half the knowledge considered necessary for his life in this world. A mandatory class X board examination will avert such a situation.

Will liberating the children’s examination pressure make them worthy in the examination of real life? The problem is educational goals cannot be short term. Our ultimate aim is not to make the child pass a specific examination but to make him competent to face the contemporary challenges in the larger society. If a decision is reactionary to a few suicide instances then it may result in a different kind of suicide for the majority of the students. What use is that education which drives the child to extreme measures in the face of failure in an examination despite all round handholding? Condemning board examination as rote is a short-sighted assessment. There is nothing rote about it if only they test the real knowledge, with questions that are process oriented than product oriented.

The revival of X board examination does not pronounce doomsday for creativity. The aim of pedagogy should be to liberate learning from the expectations of specific examinations. Compatibility between the teacher and the taught comes by intense perceptions of each other’s levels of understanding and a continuous effort in bridging the gap. An ideal bonding will slowly strengthen individualization. For this a teacher has no other option than to be creative. To see every individual in the backdrop of the average class there are intrinsic clues in CCE. To devise a variety of learning experiences, the teacher should draw from the diversity of the students’ talents. It should be understood that paraphrasing a text book is not learning by any measure. A teacher should become the learner when he ponders over the transaction of a concept.

CCE need not perish by the revocation of the optional clause of X Board examination. It could still be the most powerful tool of pedagogy since no learning is evolved without assessment and improvement. Thus a continuous evaluation of the comprehensive approach to learning should continue and remain liberated by the number or nature of examinations.