Media reports of as many as eight prestigious colleges in Delhi University announcing a cut-off of 100 per cent marks in the qualifying 12th Standard Board examinations for admission to undergraduate courses points a deeply flawed and broken school educational assessment system. In fact, at one college – Delhi University’s Hindu College – there were as many as 100 applicants with 100 per cent marks in all subjects, for the 20 available seats in the political science (honours) course.
Quite apart from the ridiculousness of having to choose between students who have managed perfect scores, the rising surge of 100 per cent scores indicates a testing and evaluation system which is badly broken. Since board exams were not held this year due to the pandemic, it also casts a shadow over the internal systems and processes in schools which have led to this flood of perfect scores.
Given the scale and complexity of our school system and the fact that there are variations in syllabus and standards across boards, it may be an apt moment to consider a standard, national aptitude test for college admissions in all subjects, on the lines of JEE and NEET which are already being used for engineering and medical admissions.
