CBSE Makes Mockery of Mother of All Exams

CBSE Makes Mockery of Mother of All Exams

  

In India the 12^th Board examination is regarded as “the mother of all examinations”. It seems this year it has struck a fear in millions of students and the parents from India, Saudi Arabia (it has largest Indian school in the world), UAE and the rest of the Gulf. Parents of thousands of children have sought re-test or relaxed evaluation of just concluded mathematics and physics examination of class XII conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education  (CBSE).   Some of the students are so shocked mentally that they are not willing to take their next examination. “Our dream is already shattered” seemed the common outburst at the Examination Centre in Indira Nagar, Bangalore.

Questions were completely different from the past CBSE papers. What is worse the schools and students were not sounded about all this in advance.  The mathematics nightmare came just days after the tough physics paper.  Now these children are wondering about their future prospect since the admissions to professional course largely depend on the marks they score in physics and mathematics.   

So what went wrong? Apparently the CBSE wanted a big change by stressing on application and skill based evaluation. Most of the questions were not from the books or the syllabus although they could be linked to the syllabus “somehow” to justify the high handedness. The over-zealous paper setters propped up questions which were way over the normal intelligence level. Some students even compared it to the standards of Indian Institute of Technology  (IIT) which general students could not have handled. IIT preparation and coaching is different ball-game and not all students can afford or have the capacity.  The application based questions make it harder for the students to score although this seems ideal for testing one’s caliber.  But again the same standards are not applied across various Boards in India as a result of which a section of student loses out. One must also keep in mind that the students need to spend more time on application based question papers. But if the question papers are lengthy the students would miss out on some questions and this is what happened in case of physics and mathematics 2015.

  

Does this mean the institutes like CBSE do not have a review team to assess the question papers - the difficulty levels - before the exams?  In case they do have, the team in question seems to have done a poor job this year. CBSE must understand that they assess general students and not just the brilliant ones. The Board cannot set up IIT level question paper and expect students to do well.  It does not have the right to spoil the careers of young people. Now they will explain saying everything was within syllabus. The fact is even experts have given statements that mathematics and physics were too difficult, too lengthy this year. The worst part was there were too many sub-questions and alleged symbol errors. What does CBSE intend? Create great scholars and scientists overnight? In fact they have demoralized the young kids. The irony is with all this kind of thinking, India does not rank high in terms of quality of education at global level simply because standards are not uniform across the country. The standard 12^th should be difficult or same across the country.  The HRD Minister, Ms Smriti Irani must take CBSE to task for this lop-sided approach in setting the crucial standard 12 papers for 2015. 

Gopal Sutar

Views expressed are personal.