Exams: Let candidates decide for themselves
PremiumSchool-leaving board exams involve high stakes and would need to be held. But let’s enforce strict covid-safety protocols and also grant students the option of dropping an academic year
It was an easy call for the government to cancel this year’s class 10 exams in view of covid, but board exams designed to test scholastic aptitude for higher studies are a different ball-game because of the high stakes involved. At a meeting held on Sunday of central and state education ministers and officials, most states were reportedly in favour of holding these school-leaving exams soon and they expressed support for a Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) proposal to administer tests in physical format for a reduced set of subjects, with each paper’s duration halved to 90 minutes so that time spent in an exam hall is minimized. Students might be asked to take exams only in major disciplines, and marks for others would be awarded on the basis of their performance on those. Scheduled tentatively for July-August, having been postponed once, this exercise is likely to be carried out on their own school premises, a break from the usual practice of shuffling exam centres. As for candidates held back by covid, they will get another chance. The CBSE, awaiting feedback from various states, expects to declare an exact schedule and format for exams on 1 June. The proposals have clearly evoked some sighs of relief among students and their parents. But they have not been able to reassure everyone.
A downtrend in officially recorded cases of covid would seem to offer a window of safety this monsoon. Yet, the possibility that coronavirus could endanger teenagers in its next surge remains a big anxiety. Articulating a view held by a significant faction, Delhi’s government has demanded that class 12 exams be scrapped. This, however, could stymie admissions to colleges and other institutes that can’t rely on schools’ internal assessments, prone as they are to grade inflation, and thus create a vacuum in place of an entire batch of would-be paramedics, doctors and other professionals. As there has been no let-up in our need for expertise in various fields, for which training programmes need to keep going, doing so would be impractical. It may be best, therefore, not to disrupt India’s feeder mechanism for higher learning. But this should only be done if proper safeguards are put in place against covid infection. While distancing protocols can easily be enforced, an airborne virus calls for extreme precaution. One suggestion is to ensure that every student and invigilator is vaccinated before exams take place. The problem with this, however, is that vaccines may simply not be available even if both groups are put on a priority list for jabs. Moreover, very few have got shots so far, the minimum 84-day gap for a second dose would stretch beyond July, and a single jab may not offer sufficient protection from the ‘double mutant’ strain of the virus.
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Since fully-secure exams cannot be held, we should offer everyone the flexibility of choice. No shame should be thrust upon students who opt out, preferring to drop an academic year instead. Education in India has been a frantic race for much too long, one that pushes teenagers hard to score big and leap ahead. Peer and parental pressure worsens this rush for degrees and other such passports to ‘a better life’. It’s a legacy of the job-option scarcity we have internalized for decades. The attitudes bred by it, unfortunately, appear to have left us little space to consider the pandemic’s psycho-social impact on adolescents. These are topsy-turvy times, nobody is too sure of anything, and our crisis would justify a deep breath taken to review our educational paradigm.
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