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Can the government tame the cheating monster in Bihar?
The recent crackdowns on cheating in exams in Bihar have led to the expected. Pass percentages have plummeted. However, is that the only evil plaguing the system? What will happen to those 14 toppers who have to take a retest coming Friday?
The Friday of the coming week will be a turning point in the academic history of Bihar. The 14 toppers of school board examinations of this year will face 3 teachers in an office in the state capital, Patna, for a retest.
This unprecedented retest follows closely on the heels of a footage broadcasted by a local TV channel recorded during a ‘sting’ operation to check the capabilities of the supposed toppers. The footage showed 2 of the top-scoring students struggling to answer even the most basic of question posed by the reporter.
The retest will see examiners verifying the handwriting of the students and asking questions to deduce whether they cheated in their examinations.
Ruby Rai and Saurabh Shresth topped the school-leaving class XII examination, for which more than a million students appeared. On paper, they are the best of the lot.
The topper in the humanities stream, Ms Rai, told the channel that political science "was all about cooking", while Mr Shresth, who stood first in science, named aluminium as the most reactive element in the periodic table, when it actually is in a less active group.
It is worth noting that both the toppers come from the same school in the state's Vaishali district. More interestingly, the college has already been blacklisted by the authorities last year for encouraging cheating. The principal of the college, who has been under a cloud, continues in his job.
File photos from the media last year show, brave – and desperate – parents, relatives and friends of students climbing school walls in Bihar to pass on answers to the students inside.
"When you go elsewhere, no one will believe your degrees. If you can't clear exams, why don't you just fail them and retake them till you pass?" a frustrated Bihar leader, Laloo Prasad Yadav, had said at the time.
Bihar has been suffering from a cheating epidemic for as long as one can remember, but only last year when these pictures went viral the visibly embarrassed government decided to do something about it. CCTV cameras were installed, 70,000 officials and policemen were deployed and a fine of ₹ 10,000 was imposed on students caught cheating during this year's school examinations.
How did these stringent measures reflect on this year’s results? More than 50% of the 1.4 million students who appeared for the Bihar Board Examinations – or the class X exam – this year failed. Last year 75% of them had cleared the exam. A Bihar minister admitted that this year's exam results showed the "actual merit of students".
Since cheating has been a long standing practice here, needless to say, one gets to see a lot of innovative ways of cheating here. A mafia, comprising teachers and school authorities plots with parents who bribe them to rig entire answer sheets.
Things have reached to such a head here that sometimes teachers complete entire exams for students, who merrily sit at home. The most common practice has been that of teachers often writing answers on the blackboard during exams.
The going rate for a rigged first division score answer paper is ₹ 40,000-50,000 while a state topping answer sheet can cost ₹ 100,000.
In Bihar, education is rightly seen as a way out of poverty for the poor and promises upward mobility to the ambitious middle class. Consequently, enrolment has risen sharply and every year increasing number of students are appearing for exams – 1.34 million students took the class X exams in 2014, up from half a million students in 2004, for instance.
But the crack down on cheating this year has crashed the pass rate sharply. More than 70% of the examinees passed the class X exam in 2014 and 2015. This year, barely 50% passed. In the class XII school-leaving board exam this year – which Ms Rai and Mr Shresth topped – 56% and 67% of the students passed in humanities and science, as against 86% and 89% last year.
To put all the onus of the failure of children on cheating would be wrong. The scenario should be viewed in its entirety. Absenteeism among teachers is very high. A similar sting conducted by a local channel on school teachers last year was enlightening. A teacher spelt Shakespeare as Shakspear. The maths teacher spelt his subject Mathmates, and looked puzzled when asked about Pythagoras.
"Our teachers hardly come to teach us," is a common refrain among students in Bihar.