Maharashtra to review no oral-exam policy for Class 10 students
Without the oral exams, the state’s pass percentage saw a dip of over 10%
After its policy to scrap oral exams, or internal assessment, for Class 10 students received criticism, the state education department has formed a committee to review this decision.
A government resolution (GR) released on Tuesday announced that a 25-member committee would revisit the policy since other boards like CBSE and ICSE still have internal assessments.
In December 2018, Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education announced that oral exams for languages and social sciences, which counted for 20 marks, would be scrapped.
The internal assessment was dropped to prevent schools from helping students to better their scores. According to the GR, the state education department is rethinking its decision.
“This year, the marking scheme for Class 10 was changed and orals were scrapped in languages and social sciences to improve the quality of learning among students of the state board. However, with other boards still continuing to give internal marks a need has been felt to revisit the policy,” reads the GR.
An official from the education department, who is a part of the 25-member committee, said, “While the marking scheme will be one of the things that it will look at, the overall pattern for Class 9-12 will also be revisited to see if any changes need to be made.” The patterns followed by the other boards will also be studied, said the official.
Uday Nare, teacher at Hansraj Morarji Public School in Andheri, said, “Orals definitely need to be brought back to ensure there is no disparity among boards. The department can ensure that inflation of marks does not happen by keeping a check on schools.”
Nare had recently written to the department seeking clarity on whether the policy, which was introduced in 2018 as a pilot project, would continue into the academic year of 2019-2020.
Without the oral exams, the state’s pass percentage saw a dip of over 10%. Following this, the education department had to allow prominent junior colleges to add 5-8% seats to ensure state board students can compete against those from the other boards.