Anushka Dey, 18, did everything right. She didn't watch television, didn't hang out with her friends, studied for four hours every day and scored 95 per cent in her Class XII Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exams. From Kolkata, Dey hoped her stellar marks would land her at one of the top colleges in Delhi University. But the stratospherically high first cut-off list at the Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) at 96.75 per cent left her stranded. Dey will now move to St Xavier's College, Mumbai, to pursue the course of her choice, Economics. She's not the only one who thinks it's the end of the world. Delhi toppers Urmi Uppal and Vishal Dewan both scored 97.6 per cent but were unable to get into the course and college of their choice. Kapil Sibal, Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, has called the impossible cut offs irrational and Vineet Joshi, chairman of the premier national examination body, CBSE, has admitted that Class XII scores are not the correct marker for selection for higher education.
Marks have been inflated, even as testing standards have been simplified. If you are 17 and can find an error with a sentence such as, "We were late and it is getting dark" or "Now we both was running", or write a hypothetical dialogue when clues and even an example is given, you will probably do well in a Class XII CBSE English exam. In the history paper, you can score an easy 25 marks in a section called sourcebased questions, where answers are based on short extracts given. Understandably, the percentage of students scoring above 90 per cent in CBSE has gone up by 162.5 per cent from 16,563 to 21,665 between 2008 and 2011. And even more stunningly, the number of students scoring above 95 per cent has gone up from 1,202 to 2,097 in the same period.
Other state boards have become as liberal with marks. A third of Delhi University's (DU) SRCC'S seats were taken by Tamil Nadu Board graduates. The pass percentage in Tamil Nadu this year is at 85.9 per cent, highest in 10 years. Also, 6,450 students scored 100 per cent marks in various subjects compared with 3,700 last year. Similarly, for the first time, a student under the Kerala state board, M.S. Shreelakshmi, scored 100 per cent in all subjects. Even in the Andhra Pradesh Board, the highest score was 99.3 per cent for the first time. A ministry official says that some boards deliberately inflate marks either under political pressure or to ensure college admission of their students. He adds that such high scores don't necessarily mean students have become brighter but that they understand exactly which answer or key word will get them good marks.
"Now people are questioning 100 per cent. We should have been alarmed long back. Even a 98 per cent cut off is shocking," says Shyam Menon, vice- chancellor, Ambedkar University, New Delhi, a new university set up in 2008 by the Delhi Government as an exclusive social science university with 300 seats focusing on quality faculty and research. But an elitist system of education like DU, where everyone rushes to the 10 top colleges out of the existing 84 (54,000 seats), perpetuates the Brahminical system India has of chosen centres of excellence, model schools and innovation centres.
Some experts blame the exam system for pushing students to the wall and forcing them to adapt to a system which is clearly faulty with a single shot at higher education (Class XII exam) turning into a do-or-die situation. The uneven quality of schools and 41 state boards has made it impossible for everyone to get uniform school education. From former vice-chancellors to parents and CBSE officials, everyone is worried. Take CNR Rao, chairman, Scientific Advisory Council to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who wrote to Singh in April that the current system be replaced with a common national entrance exam. It's an idea that is starting to make more sense as the school-leaving exam across boards focuses more on scoring marks instead of learning. Rao says, "It's like a battlefield. It seems like that when students walk into the gate for an exam. We are subjecting them to distress and agony, and some even kill themselves. It's a national shame." Former students have also protested, saying they would not have been able to get into their alma maters at today's cut offs. Omar Abdullah, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister tweeted, "I'm terrified for my sons because in five years, when Zamir (Abdullah's son) moves to college, the cut offs will be even more insane," while Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) leader, said, "Even if Shakespeare were to come back and take an English exam today, he would not score 100 per cent." Counsellors have pointed out the crisis in confidence among youngsters who can't cope with the stress. A few succumb to such relentless pressure by committing suicide.
It's a ticking time bomb. The number of school leavers seeking admission to undergraduate courses is at 13 million and is estimated to explode to 30 million by 2025. Though the share of private unaided higher education institutions has increased from 42.6 per cent in 2001 to 63.21 per cent in 2006, quality concerns are rife. According to the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, only 9 per cent of the 3,500 colleges, which went through the accreditation process, fall in A category, the best quality. India has only 355 (both state and central) universities, and it needs 1,500 if it wants to pull up its measly gross enrolment ratio (GER) to 15 per cent from 13 per cent by 2015. China, on the other hand, has created 1,250 universities in just three years.
And all this in India, when very few actually make it to colleges. India's 11-13 per cent GER compares to a global average GER of 23 per cent, developed country average at 45 per cent and developing country at 36.5 per cent. Sibal has announced that the Government aims to pull the GER to 30 per cent by 2020, which will take a miracle, given it took 55 years for India to hike its GER from 1 per cent to 10 per cent.
The HRD ministry has also failed in implementing critical changes such as regularising the national curriculum and standardisation of exams. The National Curriculum Framework of 2005 was meant to take evaluation beyond its uni-dimensional nature and move towards continuous assessment, where students are evaluated in various fields, and at regular intervals. CBSE has done this for Class X, replacing the board exam with continuous and comprehensive evaluation as well as grades but not for Class XII, where it continues with marks.
Teachers too, in a way, have abdicated the responsibility of evaluation to a public exam, which has led to a trust deficit between teacher and student. Even within its own domain, the HRD ministry has been unable to put its house in order. After piloting the landmark Right to Education scheme and replacing the gruelling Class X CBSE exams with a grading system, reform is at a standstill. Critical bills on education such as the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill, Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical and Medical Institutions Bill, Innovative Universities Bill are pending. Sibal, the Government's front-line firefighter in a series of crises, has been unable to select chairmen for two key prongs of the troika that should regulate school education-the NCERT and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). While NCERT is primarily a curriculumsetting body, the NCTE is the national body for standardising teaching by the teachers.
Sadly, in today's school education system, students are only taught how to score, not to learn. In 2005, the CBSE introduced the Higher Order Thinking Skills system or HOTS, meant to be a way out of rote and textbook-centric learning. The new style stressed more on synthesising, analysing, reasoning, comprehending, application and evaluation of subject matter rather than on drill and repetition. While HOTS is a good idea, it is the shift from long essay-type subjective questions to fragmented and objective questions which has led to high marks. A.K. Sharma, former director, NCERT, says, "CBSE reforms have remained focused only on testing cognition and not implementing the purpose of education as set out in the National Policy of Education, 1986, which aims to inculcate a spirit of inquiry, creativity, objectivity, the courage to ask questions, and an aesthetic sensibility."
Students are also switching from CBSE to state board schools after Class X for higher marks. But the reverse is true for the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE), which doesn't give liberal scores. Kolkata's well-known South Point High School has introduced CBSE alongside the state board. Principal Rupa Sanyal Bhattacharjee says that the aim of the state boards is to come as close as possible to CBSE.
Whether it is grading or marks, or an aptitude test or a board exam, the bottom line is how students score. Cutoff marks have risen over the years but how and why are students getting such high marks? A Class XII english teacher at a Delhi government school says, "It is possible to score 100 per cent even in English with the current lenient marking scheme. My school has had an exceptional result this year, with more than 29 per cent getting over 90 per cent in English. This, from students who cannot string three sentences of English together. A board paper does not test any real learning. It only tests your capability of answering a paper according to a prescribed answer sheet. My question to the CBSE is, how can an answer key dictate expression or knowledge in a subjective paper? The answer value points are not a sufficient evaluation of a student's intelligence and capability but a test of how well things can be followed to the book."
CBSE's marking scheme, made public for the first time in 2003, gives marks for merely mentioning a key word, even though the grammar, spelling and expression could be wrong, lifting parts of a given passage as an answer and fragmenting long questions into several parts, thereby making scoring easier. Another Class XII teacher of history says that even if she marks some answer sheets conservatively, while trying to judge the actual learning of the student, the head examiner often increases the marks. Examiners are paid a paltry Rs 16 for each paper they check, Rs 20 for refreshments and Rs 100 for conveyance (paid only if they check a minimum of 25 papers) and are under pressure to check 50 papers in a day while examiners estimate they cannot check more than 25.
India's education sector has to find a way out of this maze. Changes in the education system have to range from devising a common entrance test like the US SAT which is a standardised higher education aptitude test, expand proven quality institutions, generate more research funding as well as create better facilities in private universities, nationalise curriculum and standardise tests which focus on continuous evaluation of students. India already has a tried and tested system of entrance exams. The IIT entrance exam is taken by 8.5 lakh students every year, the CBSE is taken by 7.7 lakh and over two lakh students take the All India Pre-Medical Test. Why a general entrance exam cannot be devised is a question no one has answered. DU vice chancellor Dinesh Singh, in the middle of this crisis, is away in the United States and repeated attempts to question him were unsuccessful.
Apathy and inertia have driven bright students to the noose and will probably continue to. Already, more than 1.5 lakh students leave the country every year for a college degree. A 100 per cent cut off is not only the sound of a college slamming its door shut but also of 13 million students screaming to be heard.
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