Welcome to the Hall, Say Goodbye to Exam Stress

The ‘ParikshaPeCharcha’ is back with its fourth edition bringing along some new endeavours and endless amount of enthusiasm for the young #ExamWarriors! Honrable PM’s call to celebrate the examinations as festival and say no to tension, is a strong booster and….Finally the day has arrived….

‘ParikshaPeCharcha’ has been a brainchild of our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi who has established direct communication with millions of young students of our country and touched upon issues of anxiety, tension, and depression that students face. PM Modi has also written a book ‘Exam Warriors’ to instill confidence and zeal in the minds of the students appearing in their board exams and millions of students have benefitted from it.This has given a cause to rethink how we take the examinations.

We all know that examinations have an important role in the education system and during the course of our education, we take many exams but somewhere we also suffer from a psychological phobia when we appear in our exams. In fact, examinations are only a means of evaluating the level of knowledge acquired by students at the culmination of a course. Unfortunately, in our country theways and methods in which examinations are conducted, coupled with peer pressure generally createa phobia for examinations and many students suffer from acute exam depression.

It is a matter of grave concern that for many students this stress and depression become so acute that they start questioning the very purpose of these examinations and some children even go beyond this and end up in distress. In an ideal situation, examinations should be a sign of excitement and fulfillment, not depression and stress; and we need to develop the thinking of learning something from both successes as well as failures. The need for examinations and its importance is often part of the discussions in the intellectual class, but for the first time, a Prime Minister of the country has taken a major initiative in this regard by showing astounding seriousness on this subject, which is a very unique and innovative initiative to address directly to so many children. All the stakeholders in the education sector have a role to play in creating a conducive and tension-free atmosphere for the students. 

National Education Policy 2020 also addresses this issue and advocates for competency based assessment emphasizing more on conceptual understanding than rote learning and learning-for-exams….thus, ‘ParikshaPeCharcha’ is a much need step towardsthe examination reforms in the coming years. This year’s ‘ParikshaPeCharcha’ is unique in this sense that its participants also include teachers and parents, apart from the students.This year, almost 14 lakh participants have registered themselves to take part in the creative writing competitions held online onmygov.in for ‘ParikshaPeCharcha’.

This includes 10.5 lakh students, 2.6 lakh teachers and 92 thousand parents. Compared to last year, it is 11 lakh more participants! This year’s ‘ParikshaPeCharcha’ is also unique in another aspect. It is for the first time that 4295 students and 1389 teachers from 73 countries have participated in this year’s ‘ParikshaPe Charcha’.  The last 3 editions of ‘ParikshaPeCharcha’ were held in ‘in-person’ mode but this is the first time that this programme is being held in a completely virtual mode.

As we all know, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed everything around us but even during these troubled times, we are having an online virtual edition of ‘ParikshaPeCharcha’ which shows our resolve to address this important aspect of school education. This will immensely benefit our young students as well as teachers and parents.To make our exams fear-free and depression-free, specially in today’s tough times when the COVID virus is spreading aggressively in many parts of the country students, teachers as well as parents and community need to be sensitized regarding exams. We ought to be sensitized ourselves as well as sensitise others around us.

Dr. SRIDHAR SRIVASTAVA  Joint Director, NCERT and Chairman, NIOS