Union HRD Minister Prakash Javdekar’s move to reintroduce the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Class X board examinations from the 2017-18 academic session compulsorily makes perfect sense. The erstwhile UPA government had erred grievously in making it optional for CBSE students. The students could and still can choose either school-based exams or board-based ones.
In case of school-based exams, the exams were/are conducted within their own school and answers were/are evaluated by the teachers of the school. In case of board-based exams, the exam was/is conducted at an allotted centre and answers were/are evaluated at designated centres. This in actual practice amounted to virtually scrapping those examinations in 2010 avowedly to reduce academic pressure on students. That it was a retrograde step that would reduce academic standards was evident but then HRD Minister Kapil Sibal was living in his own make-believe world and was unprepared to heed well-meaning advice.
The board exams for Class 10 were in large part replaced by the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) which was good in name but hollow in practice. While it provided a less-stressful method of tests and grading to reduce academic pressure on students, it was taken seriously neither by the students nor by teachers.
With the UPA having also introduced a no-detention policy whereby no student could be failed in class 10, it was no work and all play for most students except those who were farsighted enough to realise the sudden pressure of examinations that would fall upon them in Class 12 when they would be subjected to board exams which would hold the key to their future. To leave the decision pertaining to the conduct of board examinations for class V and VIII to the states is also in order.
The states have often and legitimately complained of lack of decision-making powers considering that education is supposed to be a state subject. Since they have been conferred that right in continuity, it is incumbent on them to devise ways to monitor the performance of students prudently.
A prime motive of the UPA policy was to ensure universal education up to at least class 12. Critics of the new policy claim that school enrolments have deepened considerably across the country and that compulsory board exams for class 10 will lead to a hike in dropouts. But this way to swell numbers of enrolments is hardly a worthy way.
Instead, the school system must encourage students to strive towards clearing the examinations and provide weak students an opportunity to make it. Indeed, there should be no looking back on re-introducing compulsory board exams for class 10 at the earliest.
