Delhi: Lesser Evil

In a second major reversal decision after rollback of Delhi University’s four-year undergraduate programme in 2014, the BJP/NDA government at the Centre has compelled the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the country’s largest national school-leaving examinations board (18,417 affiliated government and private schools), to restore class X board exams. In 2010, this high school examination was made optional by the then Congress-led UPA government which substituted it with the continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) system. On December 20, the board of governors of CBSE unanimously approved reintroduction of a compulsory class X board exam for all affiliated schools from March 2018. This decision of the CBSE — an ‘autonomous’ board established by the Central government in 1962  under the jurisdiction of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry — was a foregone conclusion following alarming reports of plunging learning outcomes in India’s 37,000 colleges and 800 universities. Under s.16 of the landmark Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, no child can be detained for any reason until class VIII. This provision was made in the Act to relieve children from the stress of writing examinations in primary and upper primary education. In 2010, the HRD ministry under the Congress party’s liberal legal eagle Kapil Sibal issued a circular making the class X exam optional for all CBSE affiliated secondaries. But with the fear of detention and examinations removed until class XII, and the country’s 7 million under-trained and haphazardly certified primary-secondary teachers unable to properly implement CCE, most students performed badly in the testing class XII examinations (see p.66). Inevitably, this decision of the BJP/NDA government has angered Left-liberal academics who dominate the academy. According to Dr. Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT (National Council of Educational Research & Training) and professor of education at Delhi University, “the public examination, taken by a ‘board’, has become an integral part of modern India’s culture, permeating every aspect of life, from parenting to scheduling of elections”. “Over the last 100 years, our exam system has withstood numerous attempts to reform it. No panel — since the Sadler Commission set up in 1919 — has failed to criticise the exam system and hold it responsible for defeating the State’s efforts to improve the quality of education. A paradox underlies such criticisms. While the exam system is disliked, institutions that conduct their exams with rigour are believed to have high standards,” he wrote in the Hindustan Times (December 20). This viewpoint is seconded by Prof. M. M. Pant, a former pro vice chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). “We have gradually reduced whatever little higher order thinking skills we once had, thanks to the public examination system,” he says. However, primary-secondary teachers who are obliged to cope with the consequences of haphazard, under-researched and politically correct liberal legislation such as the RTE Act and CCE, have a more realistic assessment of ground conditions. “As an educationist, I still believe CCE is a better option…