Board examination results: We need criteria that give a fair assessment of a child’s capacities

One principal writes, “I speak straight from my heart, an overwhelming majority of students have secured 100 per cent”. Another points out, “the remarkable feature of our result is the breathless number of centum (sic)”. I fail to comprehend what that means. All I know is that the board examinations have become a national obsession.

Parents, principals, educationists and education ministers of states — in fact, society itself — have become judges in this competition that resembles a beauty contest at times. The winner takes all and the loser stands small. The child is made to believe that more the marks, more the intelligence quotient.

The board examination results are all about comparison, about numbers that peg one student higher or lower than the other. In the process, they end up changing the self-expectations of many.

Many students have done well solely because of the higher internal marks awarded by their schools. If this disparity is indeed a result of the different marking methodologies/standards of schools, it is prudent to have conversations about the criteria that level the playing field.

In contrast, some students fare extremely well in the boards and do poorly in the internal assessments. This paradox needs immediate attention.

One of the leading education thinkers of our time, Elliot Eisner, once said, “not everything important is measurable and not everything measurable is important”. The problem with our boards is that they are not improving the culture of education but they are becoming synonymous with education itself – the pendulum swings from academic posturing to self-flagellation and depression.

As parents, we must understand that intelligence assumes multiple forms and each child has natural strengths and weaknesses. We have to find ways to nurture their individuality. Many of us wrongly assume that the board examination results provide a neutral assessment of a child’s intellectual ability. A low score does not indicate a lack of knowledge about a subject. A student who is an excellent writer, for instance, might struggle to pick the right answer in a multiple choice grammar test. Similarly, it is easy to assume that students who score high in maths are good at processing information, reasoning and abstraction. But that’s not always the case. It is often seen that there is no correlation between memorising, attention span and the speed of processing information. Most times, high test scores simply mean excellence at rote memorisation and solving multiple choice questions. A board result should, therefore, be only seen as an additional data point on student learning; it should not occasion value judgements.

We have become more focused on competing against each other rather than providing children with what they need. Our socialisation makes us applaud only certain types of achievement — we don’t even look for other things our children may be good at. But when a system defines successes narrowly, it leaves out a huge number of youngsters. How can a handful of educationists who frame test papers know what will be truly useful to students in a fast-changing world. Can we, at least, pause and reflect on the damage such a system does to our children?

Parents tend to worry about the rising costs of coaching during and after school, the rising costs of college fees, whether their children will find a livelihood and most of all how will they live up to their own and societal expectations. They often end up feeling helpless, with the child becoming the victim of their frustrations.

More than eight out of 10 teenagers experience moderate to extensive pressure during the final school year – headaches, loss of sleep, anger, irritability and anxiety about academic performance. Many times, these results arrive after delays, often when students have moved on to another class.

We need a more expansive evaluation criteria for a student’s performance. As the American systems scientist Peter Senge points out, “We need assessments that are designed for learning not used for blaming, ranking and certifying. The 21st-century parent, educator and students themselves need to develop a growth mindset, a deep shift in attitudes about testing and learning”.

The world of work is changing rapidly. Employers say they need young adults who can take on new tasks and challenges, be innovative and collaborative and come up with ideas for new products and processes. Market players often complain that a large number of people seeking jobs with conventional academic qualifications are not good team players or they are not creative enough. But why blame these young aspirants? They have spent years learning that the system encourages competition and rewards conformity and compliance.

The World Economic Forum has published a report on the key skills that workers around the world will need — creativity, flexibility, collaboration, teamwork and emotional intelligence. The forum has recognised that these skills have to be cultivated in education. The emphasis on academic tests has also squeezed out vocational courses, which used to be a valuable route to employment for many young people whose interests and capacities are now neglected in schools.

The British educator Ken Robinson, who passed away two years ago once wrote, “One of the perils of standardised education is the idea that one size fits all and that life is linear. The truth is that there are many routes to fulfillment. The lives of most people have not followed a standard course… It’s important at school not to limit your children’s future by assuming that the sort of education that you had will inevitably be right for them”.

In order to nurture and challenge students’ intellect and imaginative capacities, we need to break out of minimalistic expectations and not masquerade recycled worksheets and standardised tests as pedagogical tools. Progress in learning should be related to developing sensitivities. We need to encourage students to engage and explore.

The writer is chairperson and executive director, Education, Innovations and Training, DLF Foundation Schools and Scholarship Programmes