“We have become unable to think of better
education except in terms of more complex schools and of teachers trained for
ever longer periods.”
Late last month, both CBSE[ii] and
CISCE[iii]
declared that they were cancelling all remaining board examinations for classes
10 and 12 due in 2020. While in some cases students had sat for all their examinations,
in many others they had been able to take only a few and the rest were yet to
be held. Given the current pandemic, it is clear that organising the remaining
examinations in the usual manner will be difficult in the foreseeable future.
Both boards have therefore worked out a via media whereby the average scores of examinations already completed
or internal assessments (or both) will form the basis for scores in the
remaining examinations. Since not everyone may find this a satisfactory
solution, they’ve also proposed that a regular examination will be conducted
when feasible, to enable students to improve their performance as calculated by
these average scores.
Over the years, the conduct of the board examinations,
declaration of their results, celebrating the toppers, and commiserating with those
who haven’t done as well has become a regular routine. Each year there are
inspiring stories of those who worked hard and did exceptionally well, and each
year there are the tragic reports of children who took their own lives because
the pressure became too much. Each year there is a resolve to do better next
time, to improve the system and bring about meaningful change, and each year
there is more chaos, heartbreak, and frustration, not just for the students,
but also for the teachers, parents, and schools.
When Illich wrote Deschooling
Society[iv]
in 1971, he spoke of the need to invert the education funnel that channelled
students into particular directions, imagining instead an inverted funnel that
created an opportunity for a web of learning connections. This vision of
education is one that we seem to have lost in our slavish adherence to the
annual board examination rituals. In the process, we have ended up limiting
ourselves, proving his view that “so persuasive is the power of the
institutions we have created that they shape not only our preferences but
actually our sense of possibilities”[v].
Surely there should be more to education than this? How then might we ‘invert
the funnel’? What can we do to simplify the current system instead of complicating
it further?
The age-based system of school classrooms has its origins in
the 19th century, when for various reasons it became acceptable to
organise students in a school on this basis. The underlying assumption here is
that all students have similar levels of learning and learn at more or less the
same pace. But the truth, as anyone who has been in a classroom can tell you,
is that there are wide variations between pupils, with the top ten percent of
the class often being up to four or even five grade levels ahead of the lowest ten
percent. To assume therefore, that a student is ready to take a board
examination merely because she’s reached the age of 16 or 18 years and is in
class 10 or 12 may not necessarily be appropriate.
Equally, the assumption that every student must have an equal
interest in every subject is false; some students enjoy mathematics, others
history or psychology or music – why then must we prescribe that there must be
mandatory subject groups for such examinations? Why not allow students to study
only the subjects that interest them?
An unintended side effect of the cancellations wrought by
the pandemic has been to demonstrate yet again that the present system of board
examinations actually has little or no relevance in today’s world. If a student’s
performance can be assessed on the basis of internal assessments as will be
done in several cases now, why can this not be the norm instead of the exception?
Why can’t each individual school monitor student progress through the grades
and award a certification of completion of class 10 or 12 based on that
performance?
The challenge, some will say, would lie in ensuring standardisation
– how would we be able to compare the assessment prepared by one school with another
in order to decide which student was the more meritorious? How would colleges
and universities select students based on merit if they couldn’t compare between
assessments from different schools? The simplest way to do that would be for
individual colleges and universities to have their own entrance examinations
for admission, as indeed some already do. Any student who has received a certificate
of completion of class 10 or 12 from their school would be eligible to sit such
an entrance test, and based on their performance on the test would be eligible
for admission. But since not every college or university has the means to
conduct such examinations, how else might we simplify the present system?
A possible way of doing that would be to restructure the
current annual board examinations into on-demand subject certification examinations.
In other words, when a student feels she’s ready, she can register for and take
a standardised examination conducted by the boards that would certify her level
of performance in a particular subject. This would allow the boards to offer
competency-based assessments in each subject, with students opting to take only
those assessments that they require. And it would allow students to opt for such
certification when they feel ready, not when they reach a certain age or class.
In Australia for instance, a student in class 10 can opt to take
advanced classes and do class 11 maths or physics say, and then take the class
12 certification exam when they feel they are ready. The same is the case with the
GCSE A levels, where students can choose to do one, two, or more examinations when
they are ready. A system of on-demand certification could allow advanced
students to stretch themselves by doing higher level subjects if they so chose,
while others could seek such certification at their own pace. The flexibility
of such a system would allow the boards to address the needs of different types
of students at different points in time.
A structure like this would also mean that those who choose
to avoid any end-of-cycle examination could do so without pressure or stigma,
thus reducing the motivation for some to drop out of school altogether. Many students
wish to move into vocational training or the job market at the end of class 12
instead of continuing with higher education – armed with their class 10 or 12
completion certificate from the school, they could take the entrance examinations
for vocational courses without needing to complete a board examination of the type
offered today. Essentially this would create multiple pathways to exit school
after class 10 or 12, allowing students the freedom of choice to pursue
subjects of interest in the appropriate setting.
Changes of this nature would require the boards themselves
to change, to put in place systems and technologies that would let them offer
such on-demand assessments. They would need to develop the capacity for
conducting standardised, competency-based assessments, as well as the ability
to undertake psychometric analysis to enable comparisons. They would need to create
a question bank with items of comparable difficulty, covering various aspects
of the curriculum so that students are assessed fairly and equitably, no matter
which assessment they take. Most of all, they will need to establish that each
assessment provides valid and reliable data from which appropriate conclusions may
be drawn. The good news is that none of these changes are particularly
difficult, and with India’s participation in PISA 2022[vi], many
of these capabilities are already being considered or created.
Instead of complicating education for the learner, we need
to simplify it, making the experience as stress-free and enjoyable as possible for
those going through the process, supporting the creation of a thirst for
lifelong learning. Providing multiple pathways to exit the school system after
class 10 or 12, deconstructing the current board examinations and replacing them
with a more flexible assessment system would be important first steps in that
process.
[i]
Illich, I. (1969, November 6). Outwitting the “Developed” Countries. The New York Review of Books.
[ii] Central Board of Secondary
Education, www.cbse.nic.in.
[iii] Council for the Indian School
Certificate Examinations, www.cisce.org.
[iv] Illich,
I. (1971). Deschooling society. New York: Harper & Row.
[v] Illich,
I. (1969). op cit.
[vi] Previously 2021, now deferred by a
year.
