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Is CBSE giving marks liberally to class XII students in order to compete with other boards?
Something is fishy in the state of affairs of the CBSE. On hand it admits there are no differences in difficulty levels of exams across the nation and on the other says that the standardisation process compensates for differences in difficulty levels.
Fingers are being pointed at the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for inflating marks to protect its students from a "disadvantage" on the assumption that other boards are doing so too. How much of these allegations are true? Here is an attempt to view the situation in a different light.
The latest reports coming out of Delhi claim that up to 80% of students so far admitted in DU's Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) are from Tamil Nadu board. Behind this fact is lurking the ugly fact that there exists an unhealthy competition among various school boards to be 'liberal' in marking answer sheets and grant extra marks in the name of 'standardisation'.
Here is a quick look at the fact sheet for this year. CBSE gave 16 marks extra in the class XII maths exam this year in the all-India set of papers and 15 marks in the Delhi set during the process of standardisation. In 9 subjects, the marks were 'standardised' up by more than 10%. The standardisation process balloons a student’s marks in mathematics from 77 to 93. Similarly, a student of business studies who would have otherwise received 80 marks may end up with 92 in the subject.
Although CBSE doesn't follow the practice of grouping together subjects on the basis of streams, a student with physics, chemistry, mathematics and English core from Delhi region may end up 42 'extra' marks, a spike of an amazing 10 percentage points or more in best of 4 aggregate.
Similarly, a student from the all-India pool with accountancy, business studies, economics, mathematics and English core combination could get an additional 49 'moderated' marks, again a phenomenal 10 percentage point jump.
While the moderation of marks or the standardisation process exists to even out different difficulty levels and other factors in an exam of such huge scale and spread, sources say that this exercise was conducted prudently earlier. "It would never lead to an increase of more than 5 marks," said a former CBSE chairman.
One of the reasons given by the CBSE sources for such huge jumps in marks was that students of other boards were being given both 'moderation' and 'grace' liberally. The official CBSE statement is that its standardisation process is not in response to the liberal marking by other boards.
However, the minutes of the board's result committee meeting belies this claim. It says, "…members were of the opinion that the statistics shown will lead to CBSE's students in disadvantageous position in higher education in comparison to the students of other boards (like ICSE, UP board etc) who had given both moderation and grace liberally to their students."
Admitting to a growing competition among boards, former CBSE chairman Ashok Kumar Ganguly has called upon the HRD ministry and the Council of Boards of School Education in India to intervene.
"There is a very unhealthy competition going on between the state and national boards. This should be nipped in the bud. We have seen what is happening in one of the colleges, where 75% to 80% of students are from a single board. This calls for a rationalization of marks before things worsen," Ganguly said.
Also there seems to be inconsistent difficulty levels between the question papers of the all-India and Delhi regions. Here the CBSE contradicts itself.
On one hand it says that the exercise aimed to "level up the mean achievements in the set-wise performance of the candidates attributable to the difference in the difficulty level of different set of question papers in the multiple sets scheme." On the other it says, "There is no inconsistency in question paper design and difficulty level of the question papers administered under the All India Scheme, vis-a-vis the question papers administered anywhere."
Ok, so if that’s the case then please explain the 11 moderated marks for the all India question paper in biology as against zero for Delhi region, or 12 marks for Delhi students in English (core) to zero for others, if the difficulty levels were the same?
"Moderation should never exceed 5%. Its specific purpose is in case of difference in difficulty level within different sets of question papers and not because other boards are giving high marks. Let CBSE put up on its website the moderated marks for each subject and the reasons," said Ganguly.
Calling for strict guidelines for school boards, Ganguly added that in case there were no multiple sets of question papers, as is the case in many state boards, "there is no business of moderation".