The country needs a uniform exam system from schools to university
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) are the two premier, overarching bodies that manage the edifice of school and higher education in India, respectively.
Other state education boards and councils follow their lead. Both aspire to develop an education system that will make India a ‘knowledge superpower’ by making teaching-learning a stressfree and joyful experience. Both take their directions from the Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD), but unfortunately there seems to be no alignment in their academic approaches. This mismatch is most starkly visible in their divergent approaches to the semester and annual systems.
CBSE’S FLIP-FLOP
In 2010, the CBSE introduced the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system, a term/semester-based continuous approach that made evaluation an ongoing, year-long affair. It was comprehensive in that it aimed to evaluate all those aspects of students’ growth that could be measured by an external examination, as also those personality traits, interests and attitudes which could not be assessed by it.
Excellence in diverse extra and co-curricular areas was to be recognised and rewarded. All this was to improve student learning and to reduce exam-related stress on students by rejecting the old, annual examination grind. Once completed, the syllabus of one term/semester was not to be repeated in the next. A report of the National Advisory Committee appointed by the MHRD declared, “Board examinations, taken at the end of Classes 10 and 12, have remained rigid, bureaucratic, and essentially uneducative…”. To reduce stress further, Class 10 boards were made optional, and a ‘no detention policy’ till Class 8 came into force.
After seven years, the CBSE realised that the CCE system was impractical, and ‘it was more stressful, encouraged copy-paste and laid-back attitude,’ and therefore it abolished it. Board exams were made compulsory and the annual examination system was restored from the academic year 2017-18. All this, for relieving the year-long stress that had come to be associated with the CCE and to improve academic standards.
Interestingly, the vision statement of the CBSE on its website still says, ‘The Board advocates Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation ...’
UGC BATS FOR SEMESTER SYSTEM
The UGC differs completely from the CBSE. In report after report, it sings paeans to the merits of the internationally acknowledged semester system. It believes that ‘the semester system accelerates the teaching-learning process’; it is far less stressful as the examination study load of students is halved. As a result, it enables a more in-depth study and understanding of the chosen subjects. So, adopting the semester system in higher education must necessarily be the national goal.
Further, the UGC aims to introduce more open programmes like the Choice Based Credit System (CBSC) in universities and colleges, with the one objective being once again, to ease stress on students. It claims that the CBCS is a ‘cafeteria’ type approach in which students can take courses of their choice, learn at their own pace and enjoy flexibility in the teaching-learning process.
LACK OF UNIFORM APPROACH
Thus, it seems that till very recently, both schools and higher education institutions were being nudged towards adopting the semester system. One wants to believe that it must have been a wellthought out strategy to adopt the term/semester system at the school level, and then at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, where it already existed in some places, to bring in some harmony and consistency in our education system.
Now, strangely, higher educational institutions are relentlessly being moved to the CBCS-based semester system, but our schools are being driven in the opposite direction. One can only hope that serious thought has gone into this decoupling of school and higher education.
Sadly, it is the students who are at the receiving end of these ‘reforms’. Many of them, who have been in the CCE system in schools, are experiencing tough times in their newlyintroduced annual board exams.
The recent media blitz on exam-related stress among students, and the highest levels of government stepping in to calm the anxiety of lakhs of students, shows the enormity of the problem. Any dip in students’ performance is bound to adversely affect their ranking, both nationally and internationally, and scar their selfworth forever.
To provide some relief to school students, the CBSE has promised that the school syllabi will be reduced by half from the 2019 academic session.
Many believe that this step will defeat the ‘knowledge superpower’ project, and is grossly unfair to the students who have to appear in exams during the interregnum with full syllabi. This may also further aggravate the pressure that students face in preparing for competitions and admission tests.
So, are we to understand that what is good for a school student is anathema for those in higher education and viceversa? The individual merits and demerits of the two systems are not the issue here. The issue is of tinkering with systems to the detriment of students with every change in government.
Ideally, a uniform examination system in schools, colleges and universities should be followed. One nation, one system!
TODAY, HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS ARE RELENTLESSLY BEING MOVED TO THE SEMESTER SYSTEM, BUT OUR SCHOOLS ARE BEING DRIVEN IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. THIS DECOUPLING OF SCHOOL AND HIGHER EDUCATION IS NOT GOOD