The Maharashtra state education department has formed a committee to review the policy to scrap oral exams, or internal assessment, for Class 10 students, this comes after it received criticism.
According to the Hindustan Times, on Tuesday a government resolution (GR) released which announced that a 25-member committee would revisit the policy since other boards like CBSE and ICSE still have internal assessments. In December 2018, Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education announced that oral exams for languages and social sciences, which counted for 20 marks, would be scrapped. The internal assessment was dropped to prevent schools from helping students to better their scores.
But now according to the GR state education department is rethinking its decision. “This year, the marking scheme for Class 10 was changed and orals were scrapped in languages and social sciences to improve the quality of learning among students of the state board. However, with other boards still continuing to give internal marks a need has been felt to revisit the policy,” reads the GR, reported the leading daily.
An official from the education department told the Hindustan Times, “While the marking scheme will be one of the things that it will look at, the overall pattern for Class 9-12 will also be revisited to see if any changes need to be made.” Maharashtra's pass percentage saw a dip of over 10% without the oral exams. Due to which, the education department had to allow prominent junior colleges to add 5-8% seats.
