Why scrapping board exams won't work in India

It does look as if the UPA Cabinet is running on steroids - each minister is trying to outsmart the other with radical policy announcements and raking in a national debate every other day. Perhaps the most significant of the proposals has been the suggestion to make class 10 and 12 exams optional. It's a welcome change to have someone like Kapil Sibal heading the Human Resources Development ministry and a number of Mr. Sibal's policy statements are sure to bring in sweeping changes to the educational structure of the country. Though the intention to make the board exams optional is laudatory, I am convinced that it will not serve the purpose of reducing stress on students and parents and more importantly will not radically change the educational system of the country. Below is an interview of Mr. Sibal on the same topic by Barkha Dutt:



Here is why I think Mr. Sibal's well intented and ambitious idea will not work:

> Stress to the students and parents is not caused by the examinations per se. Examinations are just a vehicle that externalises the deeply embedded culture of social expectations and a uni-dimensional system of measuring the capability and worth of an individual.
> In the Indian social context - 'success', 'accomplishment', 'achievement' and to a large degreee the 'perceived social worth' of a student is primarily measured by the single factor of marks. As these social perceptions greatly affect the morale and esteem of an individual, the inner need to score high on the single parameter (marks) that defines these perceptions will naturally be very high.
> As George Orwell said "All animals are born equal. Some are more equal than others". I do not think that every individual is endowed with the same cerebral abilities and there will surely be people strewn all over the scale of measurement from top to bottom. This is not going to be altered by making the board examinations optional and surely this will come to glaring light for the single national examination that Mr. Sibal is proposing. So in effect, all that Mr. Sibal's proposal will do is to transfer the stress and trauma from the board examinations to the single national examination that he is mooting. We need to tweak our social perception to accept the fact that people will be differently endowed and not to treat failing in an examination as a social stigma.
> My basic argument is that what we need is a multi-dimensional scale of measuring the performance of a student. Currently, the socially and academically accepted parameter for success and achievement is solely marks - which puts extreme pressure on students to do well only on this single measure. But, if the society and more importantly colleges change the measurement of success and accomplishment to a broader array of parameters, the importance on examinations will naturally die away. For example, if colleges and society measured success solely on the dancing ability of students and if admissions were based solely (this word is emphasised because that is what we do right now, base admissions solely on the basis of marks and it does sound ridiculous with this example isnt it?) on how well they did on a national dancing examination(!), who would ever care how well a student did in science or mathematics or history? Parents would be spending a fortune on getting dance tuitions and the same stress and trauma would be present days before the dance examination. Every society has certain parameters for the measurement of social perceptions like success and altering these parameters will alter the way these perceptions are measured.
> The bane of our educational system is this uni-dimensional measurement of the accomplishment of a student. This kills all initiative and efforts to build a more balanced learning experience, because what is rewarded is non-creative linear learning. For example, even the premier colleges of India will give admission to a person who has scored 97% in his board exams, over a person who has scored 90% but has an excellent track record of extra-curricular achievements - on what basis do you say that the former student is more qualified than the latter to study in the institute? Marks are rarely a fore-bearer of success in life and it's high time we shed this uni-dimensional focus on a single parameter of measuring achievement and success.
> Mr. Sibal would do well to introduce a more balanced system of measuring the success and achievement of a student - by considering the quality of extra curricular activities, participation in inter-school competitions, depth of creative expression of the student, organisational abilities displayed, social service, evidence of research, letters of recommendation etc. This will surely revolutionise the way achievement and success is perceived in our society and surely lessen the importance and stress created by examinations.
> I will also appeal to Mr. Sibal to make teaching an attractive career option (or even a compulsory one for students from premier government colleges in line with the policy for MBBS students having to serve a rural term). It is my firm belief that the reason for the dwindling quality of education in the country is primarily due to the lack of creative and inspirational teachers at the school and most importantly at the college level. We have all grown up listening to the wonderful Indian tradition of a guru-shishya relationship, where the guru was seen next to God. This respect to the guru was not born out of him being in that position, but due to the immense knowledge, humility and concern the Guru possessed. Unfortunately, with teaching being seen as the last resort of an unemployed man and being 'branded' as an un-exciting, monotonous and stagnant profession - creative, inspirational and committed teachers are a rarity in this country. Without a change to the quality of teaching in the country, any radical policy announcement by the respected Union HRD minister will fail to reach the last thatched government school in one of the thousands of villages in the country.

P.S.: I wonder sometimes why governments do not take a systemic view and address the actual problem rather than trying to roll out piecemeal solutions that just dress the wound. Stories like that of Dr. Abraham George and of the Super 30 IIT training institute in Patna clearly show that what we desperately need is an upliftment in the quality of education through better teachers, better access to schools and a more balanced measurement of the success, accomplishments and abilities of students.