Marks moderation row: CBSE won’t challenge order in Supreme Court, but no end in sight to troubles

Source – firstpost.com 

The Central Board for Secondary Education, India’s biggest educational board, has indicated it will announce results of the Class XII examinations within 48 hours and abide by the Delhi High Court decision that stopped the board from scrapping its marks moderation policy from this year.

The New Delhi-based board took the decision to do away with the policy in April. The move was catastrophic for students seeking higher level exams to professional courses, both in India and abroad.

Thanks to a Delhi High Court order that allowed continuation of the board’s moderation policy, which it adopted in 1992, students from 10,678 schools under CBSE will get extra marks.

But then the board realised that some of the boards used the policy to increase marks, thereby raising the overall pass percentage. As a result, the scores pushed astronomically high cut-offs marks — sometimes touching 100% — for subjects ranging from history to mathematics during admission to sought-after colleges.

The CBSE was unanimous that the process of moderation was grossly unfair. But the decision to scrap it happened after the board examinations were held, a move considered unjust by many affected parties.

The board results are considered the largest stepping stone to higher education because students secure admission to universities based on their CBSE scores.

Prakash Javadekar, who is in charge of the ministry responsible for handling the crisis, said results will not be delayed. “We will not put the students at a disadvantage, the CBSE is on top of it,” says Javedkar. However, he did not explain why the CBSE did not take the decision a year in advance.

The delay — the results were meant to be out on 24 May — had caused tremendous distress to thousands of students appearing for admissions in engineering and medical colleges. Among them were those who had opted to study abroad on the basis of tentative marks issued by their respective schools.

“Now, students next year will be mentally ready because there would be no such additional marks. We are greatly relieved, but this ping pong game could have been avoided,” says Sukanta Chakravarty, whose son appeared for the CBSE Class XII examinations.  “I am happy that this uncertainty over marks is going to end.”

CBSE rushed their decision 

The Delhi High Court on 23 May said that doing away of the marks moderation policy was unfair to this year’s students who had registered for the exam when the policy was still in place.

The bench of acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Pratibha M Singh asked the CBSE why it could not implement the policy change from next year, as the results of the 2016-2017 exams were expected in a few days.

The court made it clear that the CBSE did not handle the case sensitively and rushed to their decision in April.