The speeches were poignant and moving. The concern expressed was genuine. Our students taking board examinations are indeed under immense stress. Sandeep Dikshit, member of Lok Sabha, gave a pointed rendition of the burden on our children: “We talk of a society free from fear, but our children appearing for the 10th and 12th standard exams are the most terrified lot.” Speaker Somnath Chatterjee added an unusually personal note: “My granddaughter is in Class 10 and the entire house is in a tense mood now.” He expressed support for the sentiment expressed by Dikshit that CBSE and NCERT be requested to look into ways of lightening the burden on children; their childhood needs to be rescued from a demanding education bureaucracy.
Certainly, the CBSE could use a lot more pedagogic self-reflection. But it is also an insurmountable fact that no matter how much CBSE modifies its curriculum, in the final analysis we have a single metric of evaluation at the high-school level. Having a single commensurable measure of student achievement is part of a search for non-discretionary, transparent criteria for admission. But it is also a tacit acknowledgment of how little trust we have in our educators. The normal set of instruments that can supplement student performance in exams — internal assessment, references, interviews, other achievements — is considered too untrustworthy and open to manipulation. Exams are going to be important, but a system in which everything boils down to them will be a recipe for undue stress.
But Parliament spectacularly misdiagnosed the source of the stress. The primary source of stress on the students is not the curriculum. It is simply that quality institutions in higher education are in extremely short supply. In the current system, every marginal mark might make a difference to your prospects of admission, no matter what the curriculum. An ideal system of higher education has two attributes. There must be an adequate supply of good quality institutions. But equally importantly, the differences in the quality of institutions must be a gradual downward sloping curve. If you did not get into the best institutions, the price you pay for getting into the second best is not that high. In our case, there is a very small cluster of desirable institutions, surrounded by a sea of low quality colleges. Unless the supply and quality of higher education institutions are changed, the quest for the marginal mark will...
