- That the education sector has taken a sound beating owing to the pandemic-induced lockdowns over the last year-and-a-half needs no further elaboration. When every other sector was allowed to function in between successive Covid waves, albeit sporadically, the only vertical to have been ignored for obvious reasons from commencing full tilt is the education segment. Even though higher grades, undergraduate, and postgraduate institutions did start pedagogy by following recommended hybrid model – both offline and online – the teachings never picked up is stating the obvious. Consequently, crucial board examinations for Grade X and XII did suffer in the absence of holding conventional paper-pen examinations for two successive years.
PC: Our Correspondent
- The Boards and Council tasked to undertake Grade X and XII progressions had no option but to resort to unconventional methods to award marks to students who seldom went to school and never taking final exams. Recently announced CBSE Class X and XII boards show a record of 99.04% and 99.37% students passing, respectively. Hold your breath, students scoring above 95% have witnessed a jump of 38% and 81% in Class X and XII as well. These performances of lakhs of students will leave us dumbfounded going by the marks awarded. This extraordinary scenario is played out across state boards too. It is simply astonishing to witness Maharashtra HSC results showing a gravity-defying 1000% rise in the 90% category.
- Unbelievable and unfathomable for sure. There is widespread resentment, rightly so, as to how online pedagogy with its limited reach and usefulness has gravely affected the learning skills of students cutting across grades. Scores of educationists, academicians, experts from the field of science and medicine, as also concerned parents have severely undermined the counterproductive effects of online teachings for some time now. With such irrefutable evidence crying how learning outcomes have suffered during this challenging period, who will such grade inflation fool is the moot point to ponder over. One can visualize the scenario unfolding when college cutoffs will invariably move north as grade inflation was a scourge even before the pandemic struck.
PC: Kian Northcote
- Brace up for hard times, folks! Note that India’s gross enrolment ratio in higher education is 27% as compared to other developed and developing countries. With these inflated marks under their belt, it is expected that more students should be attending colleges and universities. Is there enough quality college capacity to accommodate surging numbers? Sadly, the answer is an emphatic no. More pertinently, how will existing institutions filter a dramatically increased number of applicants with such high marks? In the absence of the actual measuring ability of conventional exams, relying on awarded marks alone would be unsound, to say the least. What should be the way out to assess the real worth of a student then?
- Look not far than a ready framework available in the Central Universities Common Entrance Test conducted by the National Testing Agency which should test the acquired skill sets and knowledge levels of students. It should be thought of as an Indian SAT by holding it multiple times a year. Of course, colleges too should be allowed to adopt stringent admission tests to comprehend the depth of student’s comprehension levels. Hopefully, post the pandemic, the National Education Policy should start taking concrete measures to overhaul the school examination systems if examinations are to have any meaning.
