Litmus test for Sibal’s scheme
Kapil Sibal's announcements on grading system in CBSE and then no boards for class X students has opened up a series of debates

By Shubhdarshani Mitra
New Delhi, September 11: “I am happy that there will be no class X boards. But I have been told that there will be assessment by school teachers. My English teacher is not too fond of me. I am involved in sports a lot. Will that affect my grades?” wonders Shikha Gupta (name changed) when asked about the new developments in the CBSE board. Her mother is skeptical, as to what if the teachers who are biased towards some students get into settlinging scores. This is a cause for concern for a number of parents.

Ameeta Mullah Wattal, principal, Springdales, Pusa Road, New Delhi, who is a member of the education reforms committee, questions this shaken faith in the school system and asks, “If the parents are worried that the school and teachers might be prejudiced in class Xth, it can happen in other classes too. If parents have trusted the school and teachers since beginning, why the skepticism in class X?”

According to the latest development there will be no board examinations for class X from 2011 onwards and the students will be promoted to class XI through internal assessments. The assessments will be made based on scholastic and co-scholastic performance that will be graded. There will be nine-point grading for scholastic performance, from exceptional to unsatisfactory and five point grading for co-scholastic performance. The focus will be on year-long learning and overall assessment of the students. It will be through Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), which will be done through formative assessments per term from April to September and October to April and one end-of-term assessment.

The students will however be allowed to take an online/offline on-demand assessment if they wish to change school after class Xth and they will be issued certificates by the CBSE. The students will not only be graded for their academic performance but also on life skills like thinking skills, emotional skills, attitude towards teachers, peers etc. Also, students will have to choose from literary, scientific and aesthetic skills and they will be assessed on sports related activities as well.

“I think it's too early to assess a child on life skills at that stage, for unless you enter the real world you cannot assess someone on it,” says Shubha Misra, mother of two kids.

The obvious buzz doing the rounds with the elimination of Xth boards along with the grading system is that it will lessen the stress on students. The pressure to perform from parents, school and peers, has been debated time and again. In a recent case, a Delhi girl committed suicide by jumping out of the window after she failed to get admission in one of the reputed colleges.

“This new development is a very welcome change from the perspective of suicidal tendency among students. This is sure to bring down the stress levels in a big way and allow students to bring out their potential more effectively. In the earlier system, the students would not only get stressed with the workload, but also, and much more so with the estimated result. When students get marks, the result is more concrete and the disparities are glaring. Also, for generations now, we all have been conditioned to think of performance in terms of numbers. This new system will wipe out all of this. With no numbers in the report card the impact will not be half as much. So, even if a student was to get a 'D', it would not seem as threatening as a 40 per cent. The difference between an A and a D will also not seem too great. Hence, this new grading system will certainly help in bringing down suicide rates among students,” shares Dr Sanjay Chugh, senior consultant psychiatrist.

Parents too are happy that the burden to score will ease out but in the process class XII boards might become more of a hullabaloo.

“It's a good decision, for there is so much of unnecessary stress on the child because of scores. Moreover, the child is told all the time about how a good performance in boards can be life changing. The child either becomes too sensitive because of all the hype or just stops bothering. This extreme behaviour can be a cause for worry,” says Misra.

The other point of contention is that will this step corrode away the sense of competition in the students for they might end up taking the education system lightly. And if so, wouldn't the XIIth boards become even a bigger monster when all of a sudden a student will appear for the board examinations and face the hype along with the concern that what will happen to his/her future if s/he doesn't score well to be able to get into a good college.

But school authorities beg to differ. “One cannot equate the boards with the spirit of competitiveness. A student goes through nursery to IXth class before that so there is competition there as well. Moreover, such competition brings out anxiety, jealousy and negative energy. A child needs to compete with himself/herself and not with anyone else. Also, different people have different learning abilities and the boards cannot be taken as a parameter to inculcate a competitive spirit. It's a faceless competition based on rote learning,” says Wattal.

While there is no doubt that this initiative will relieve the students of the pressure to perform and score (for why should a student's life be hijacked by five NCERT books as Wattal says), are the teachers trained and oriented enough to get into the new system? Moreover how do we grade students on abstract subjects like thinking skills or the aesthetic skills, which can become subjective assessments?

CIE's Chambers (?)brings in a valid point when he says that this might pass on the pressure from one stage to the other.

“Without a Xth board exam there will be questions from teachers on how they assess learning outcomes after 10 years of learning. How will the students narrow down their choice of subjects so they can begin to specialise more at plus two? How will teachers continue to motivate students for academic success and how will they measure the progress year on year? Also, does it not just pass the pressure onto another stage in the pupil's life? These are questions that need to be addressed,” he contends.

There is a feeling that the teachers also need to be disciplined and trained so that they are able to adapt to the new system.

“I think disciplining of teachers is very important. These days there is no connect between teachers and the students. A teacher needs to be mature enough to understand the child,” shares Misra.

The debate will continue till the decision is implemented and the first results are out. But as Chambers points out, without a corresponding shift in the entrance criteria for the universities, the outcome might be limited.