A few days after the state government cancelled Class 10 (SSC) exams in the state, the education department is weighing in all its options to draw up a fair marking criterion for students. With the academic futures of nearly 17 lakh students at stake, the government needs to first address all the challenges concerning the options that are being considered in place of physical exams.
Cancellation of exams
On April 20, the state government following a cabinet meeting decided to cancel Class 10 state board exams owing to growing Covid-19 infections and resultant lockdown. State education minister Varsha Gaikwad announced that students will be marked based on internal assessments. Since then, the state education department has held numerous consultation meetings with various stakeholders including schools, teachers, parents, educationists and technology firms to assess and understand feasible ways of marking students.
Anticipating future challenges
Some suggestions that were discussed in a few of these meetings included promoting all students and conducting entrance tests for junior college admissions, marking students based on internal exams conducted at the school level, marking students based on their cumulative performance of two-three years etc. Experts who have been a part of these discussions said that while the specifics of each of these options can be worked out later, what also needs to be looked into is the challenges they are likely to pose in future and address them right away.
“For instance, if we promote all students without giving them scores, these students might get a college seat because the state will look into it. But they might have problems when they apply for a job, for instance, where the requirement is 50% pass marks in Class 10 exams. These seem minor challenges but it is imperative to address them now to avoid future confusion,” said an expert on the condition of anonymity.
{{/usCountry}}“For instance, if we promote all students without giving them scores, these students might get a college seat because the state will look into it. But they might have problems when they apply for a job, for instance, where the requirement is 50% pass marks in Class 10 exams. These seem minor challenges but it is imperative to address them now to avoid future confusion,” said an expert on the condition of anonymity.
{{/usCountry}}Need mechanism for internal assessments
While the education department is mulling the use of scores of internal assessments, experts said there needs to be a mechanism in place to identify and fix the possible inflation of scores. “Schools are likely to inflate marks when it’s left up to them. Hence, it will be better if their inputs are compared with data from the board over the years. The state board has data on school wise and subject wise performance of students across the state. For instance, if the number of distinction holders in a school has always been 10% of the total students and this year the number goes to 20 or 30%, then that deviation can be caught and identified,” said an official.
The state board had not asked schools to conduct exams in a specified format this year. As a result of this, many worry that school data on internal assessments might not be consistent.
Experts also said that the government needs to ensure that the solution that it comes up with is as fair as possible. “Conducting an entrance exam, for instance, will be unfair because students have not been informed about this in advance. Suddenly, we cannot ask students to write an exam which they are not prepared for. Also, there are various questions about who will set the papers, what the syllabus for these exams will be etc. which will add to the anxiety of students,” said Basanti Roy, former secretary of the Mumbai divisional board.
The challenge of equivalence
Rizwana Shaikh, a teacher from a government-aided school in Mumbai said, “The government needs to strike a right balance between equivalence and assessing the child’s performance in the best possible way at the moment. Our students should not lag behind their counterparts from other boards during admissions.”
Some solutions the state board has come up with in the last few years to bring about a level playing field for state board students vis-a-vis other boards comprise best-of-five scores of six subjects are considered for calculating overall scores of students. The others include setting aside 20 of 100 marks for internal assessments such as orals and practicals, and between 3 and 25 bonus marks for excelling in areas such as sports, drawing and different performing arts
Officials from the education department said they are awaiting the assessment criteria from CBSE and ICSE before they can finalise their own. This year, the CBSE, ICSE, IGCSE and IB have all decided to cancel physical exams and go with internal assessments and predicted grades for Class 10 students.
OPTIONS BEING EXPLORED BY THE BOARD
- Internal assessments: Schools will be asked to submit data of internal scores. This data can then be cross verified with the trend for the last year/s and student scores can be calculated with the help of statistical tools.
- Entrance exams at junior college level: Junior colleges where competition is fierce can conduct entrance tests at their level. In a recent meeting with principals of colleges, however, it was conveyed that colleges are not equipped to conduct such exams and hence the board will have to handle it if needed.
- Calculating cumulative scores: An overall performance of a student over a period of time (2-3 years) will be assessed to arrive at his/her scores for the exam.
Boardwise numbers
Class 10 student data (2020)
SSC: 17,54,367
CBSE: 73,484
ICSE: 23,336
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