All's Not Well That Ends Well

my 'opinion' on the cancellation of exams

Weeks of uncertainty was finally put to an end today. The Government announced, through its highest spokesperson - the Prime Minister himself - that the CBSE Examinations of Class 12 will not be conducted for the academic year 2020-21 in view of the COVID-19 pandemic which is still raging across India, albeit at a slower pace than before. 

I am not on social media but from what I could gather from the reactions on student groups, the decision came as a relief to many while others were disappointed that their year-long hard work to get a good score and secure a decent college admission had been in vain. Fortunately for me, the Board examinations do not impact my future prospects. However, I felt that what was getting missed amidst all this is the larger picture, so to say. While focusing on the merits of the immediate decision at hand and reacting to it with either glee or dismay, I felt we were missing the woods for the trees ? 

In my opinion, this entire episode - of delaying Board Examinations, conducting protracted meetings, having petitions filed in the apex court, children waiting for a decision with bated breath - represents a colossal and disgraceful failure of our education system in adapting to the changed times, taking care of its stakeholders and most importantly, responding to the inherent problems of our assessment mechanisms. It is a failure which a month of brainstorming with the most perspicacious experts could not have addressed. 

The Class 12 Board Examinations in India are perhaps, one of the most important tests a student writes in his academic journey. While they may not be so significant for people who write entrance exams to universities (like me), to thousands of others they represent the gateway to a good college education and a decent job in the future. For students who study in small towns and villages, they are the only exams that exist. For thousands of schools across India, they are the most important benchmark for the institution’s academic excellence. For millions of teachers, they represent the ultimate goalpost. In short, these examinations are the pinnacle of Indian school education. 

But what are these examinations ? A set of five papers a student writes for 3 hours each on 5 days stretched across a month and a round of pre-exam “practicals” carrying 20% weightage in the final scorecard, accompanied with the dread of an “external”. That’s it. 

Since the time of the Britishers, this mode of assessment has been our only benchmark for evaluating academic ability, with a few modifications every now and then. It is ironic that while we embark to celebrate 75 years of our independence from the Raj, the change we have made on the educational front has been abysmal, to say the least. Our priorities have clearly been misplaced : not on building our health or education systems, but on deciding insignificant land disputes and demonizing fictional enemies.

The sad part is that for as long as I can imagine, I have been a spectator and a participant of heated debates on education reforms and in the context of this article, reforms in the way we test our students. There have been committees set up, college debates organised and speeches given about how a 3 hour examination at the end of the year is not and cannot be a good gauge of a student’s abilities and more importantly perhaps, the effort put in by children throughout the year. If at all, they test rote learning, the ability to write “beautiful answers” and the dedication to “stick to the textbook”. However, in all these years, for all our talk of an emerging superpower, we have not been able to devise a mechanism which not only respects the standards of academic vigour but is also robust enough to not crumble down and collapse as it has now. As a system, we have failed to reinvigorate the spirit of inquiry in the classroom, motivate children to learn for the sake of learning, encourage teachers to ‘go beyond the book’ and set a goal which is worth pursuing. 

As a Class 12 student myself, I can vouch for the number of times my teachers have had to say - “we can discuss all these issues but remember, for the Boards, write what is given in the NCERT.” This is not to say that the NCERTs are not good text-books. They are. Nor is this to claim that our teachers don’t want to put in the extra effort. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. However, it is the assessment mechanism at the end of the year and the significance it carries which forces an entire academic community to fixate on a 3 hour paper that seals a student’s fate. 

Therefore, to me this decision does not reflect a response to a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe, rather, it represents a helpless reaction to a problem of our own making. A problem which existed well before the pandemic struck and a problem we couldn’t address over a year of fighting the virus. I call it helpless because given the current set of circumstances, it was arguably the best decision that could have been taken, which also explains why the majority of the students are happy with it. However, that does not take away from the fact that it is a betrayal of the year-long effort put in by students across the country, it is a betrayal by a sovereign nation which possesses nuclear power but cannot ensure a fair, equitable and merit-based system of entry into college and it is a betrayal which will continue to haunt us, unless we do something to fix it. 

All’s not well that ends well.

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