The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will continue to crack the whip on dummy schools, board secretary Himanshu Gupta said at an event in a Lucknow school on Monday.
Dummy schools are those where minimum attendance is not compulsory. Besides, these institutions resort to dummy admissions by charging nominal fees to help students study in coaching institutes to prepare for JEE or NEET and they go to school only to appear in the board examinations.
“Surprise inspections are regularly being conducted in CBSE schools across the country to check whether the schools are running as per the provisions and norms contained in affiliation and examination bye-laws. We are going tough on such institutions and stringent action will be taken against the errant schools,” Gupta said.
“This year, in March, the CBSE found that some 20 such schools in India, including three from U.P, were committing various malpractices of presenting dummy students, ineligible candidates and not maintaining records properly. After a thorough inquiry, CBSE decided to disaffiliate them,” he said, talking to the press here at Seth Anandram Jaipuria Group of Schools that organised the third edition of “Re Skilling - Up Skilling: Jaipuria Annual Refresher Training 2024.” The initiative came in for praise from the CBSE secretary.
“There are various ways that CBSE can find out if an affiliated institution is following prescribed norms or it is giving dummy institutions. We check the number of teachers hired by the schools, teacher’s pay slips, admission of students without proper registration, kind of logistics schools have, attendance register and, of course, if there are any complaints against the institution. And CBSE will not hesitate to disaffiliate them after verifying all facts,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}“There are various ways that CBSE can find out if an affiliated institution is following prescribed norms or it is giving dummy institutions. We check the number of teachers hired by the schools, teacher’s pay slips, admission of students without proper registration, kind of logistics schools have, attendance register and, of course, if there are any complaints against the institution. And CBSE will not hesitate to disaffiliate them after verifying all facts,” he said.
{{/usCountry}}The axe will fall on schools that are regularly committing malpractices, CBSE secretary said.
Pleading anonymity, a CBSE school principal said, “This is the manifestation of commercialisation and commodification in school education. This existed earlier also but becomes rampant now. This is there in ICSE board too and is done by schools in collusion with coaching institutions.”
“Coaching institutions have expanded so much now that they have become bigger than the formal schooling system. Most of the data sent by many schools to boards are fake, unreliable and in some cases, may not even exist . The respective so-called students may not even undergo any schooling process. We need to take strong measures to stop this practice. It will be good if CBSE bye-laws become an Act so that strong punitive measures can be taken, besides downgrading and disaffiliation of schools,” a teacher said.
‘CBSE working on modalities of twice-a-year exam system’
After the ministry of education asked the CBSE to work out logistics for conducting board exams twice a year from the 2025-26 academic session, CBSE is working on the modalities and all details will be made public in due course of time, said its secretary Himanshu Gupta.
The plan aims to reduce academic stress and aligns with the objectives outlined in the National Education Policy (NEP) introduced in 2020 that envisages biannual board examinations to provide students with ample opportunities to excel academically.