- No less than the Prime Minister of the country fervently wishes us to believe that the nation is headed in the right direction to not only progress dramatically in the next couple of decades but also stand next to the elite nations to be counted among the most advanced by the year 2047. Every citizen in the country would not mind when we hear these exhortations coming from the top echelons of the government. Who would not wish to be counted among the best with every bit of developmental results available for our consumption without spending too much of our earnings? None whatsoever. If people are endowed with spending power available to some of the most advanced nations, why should we be sparse in our willingness to embrace/spend the same?
PC : The Hindu
- Now, it’s one thing to be aspirational and another to be equipped with the requisite infrastructure in all fields of economic parameters, including our higher educational institutions and their systems, especially while conducting examinations and subsequently declaring the results. Unfortunately, the agency entrusted with conducting the entrance exams for higher professional education, like medicine, is in the news for all the wrong reasons. We are aware of how the NEET-NTA fiasco has panned out in the last couple of years, severely affecting scores of aspiring students from getting into renowned medical colleges. As if this grief were not enough, yet another digitized exam process has brought in more grief for the student fraternity. It’s a sad scenario indeed.
PC : ALO
- The moot point to ponder over here is why change is rolled out without stress-testing systems? Onscreen marking, offscreen trauma. As reported, several Class 12 students, teenagers all, have been exposed to more than just the botch-up of mismatched answer sheets. This year, CBSE adopted an onscreen marking system. This entailed that paper-pen answer sheets were scanned; examiners marked digitized answer sheets. Once the results were out last week, many complained of unusually low marks, totally unexpected given their own measure of their performance. As part of the re-evaluation application, CBSE uploaded applicants’ answer sheets for the subjects in which re-evaluation is sought. Only for some kids to make the shocking discovery that answer sheets marked and uploaded in their names weren’t theirs at all. Can you believe it?
PC : worldschildrensprize.
- The plight of the kids, most of whom have slaved for months for the all-important Class 12 Boards, is hard to imagine. Such mismatches must also necessarily mean that there are students out there whose marksheets read better than their actual test scores. The future of all these school-leaving youngsters rests on these marks, and some, for college admission. What a mess. One of the teens flagged the mismatch on social media to get CBSE’s attention. For this, he suffered vicious trolling where no apology was forthcoming. CBSE has conceded the mix-up. It has corrected errors. But that’s beside the point. Post-mortems don’t bring back the dead; in this case, trust in their new process. How many such mix-ups have gone unnoticed? Disturbing will be an understatement.
