The Supreme Court on Thursday asked CBSE and ICSE, the two prominent educational boards, to spell out in two weeks the objective evaluation criteria to award marks and grades to Class 12 students after the Centre decided to cancel this year’s examinations.
There is a sense of concern among schools and parents on possible “disparity in assessment”. Avnita Bir, director-principal of Mumbai’s R N Podar School, said: “The Class 12 exam is a high-stakes one as it is the gateway to universities. Whether a student, who will get a 70% from our school, is on a par with another with the same score from a different school is the big question”.
Universities are rejigging their admission policies. “Admissions purely based on Class 12 marks is not happening this time. Once the results are declared, we will analyse the scores of different boards and set the benchmark and decide on the new parameters,” said Atul Chauhan, chancellor, Amity University, Noida.
Results based on alternative modes are disconcerting for institutions like Delhi University, whose admission policy for the majority of the undergraduate programmes is based on Class 12 marks. Manoj Sinha, principal of Aryabhatta College said: “Cutoffs soar high in DU with a large number of students getting over 98%. The problem this year is we don’t know what system CBSE would adopt for releasing the results”.
Sinha added that in all likelihood if schools are given a free hand to release their results by boards, then the schools may modify results to make sure their students have high marks. “We used to rationalise the marks of multiple state boards and would come out with competitive cutoffs. But if schools are given the power then there would be will on our part”.
According to educationist Meeta Sengupta, “Universities should include but not wholly depend on school marks for admissions. Not just this year. A short test, viva or interview, asking for more information on the all-round achievements of the student in the application and special points given for awards, abilities and overcoming difficulties can be included”.
V N Rajasekharan Pillai, VC of Somaiya University, Mumbai and chancellor of ICFAI University, Tripura pitched for “decentralised admissions”. “Why not permit credible established higher education institutions (colleges) devise their own admission criteria? Even conducting an entrance test under the pandemic situation for limited numbers at the college level would not be much of a problem.”
Shashank Shwet, co-founder, ImaginXP, highlights the limited utility of the board exams. He said: “The unprecedented decision to cancel the board exam is the last nail in the coffin for a 10+2 system of examination. The interest of a large number of students from diverse backgrounds, would have been an important point in this decision as India is a vast country which has a lot of disparity in terms of school infrastructure at multiple levels. However, the humongous challenge of computing a dependable result will need to be met now.”
