Uncertainty looms as the results of class X and XII which has 1.5 crore students under CBSE are getting delayed as chaos over moderation of marks grows.
Amid indications that CBSE may move the Supreme Court against the Delhi HC order asking it not to do away with the moderation policy this year, several other school boards are likely to delay announcing Class XII results as they wait and watch the developments.
The UP board decided on Wednesday to follow whatever call CBSE takes while the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, which normally declares its results by mid-May, seems to have a similar strategy.
Adding to the uncertainty is CBSE’s silence on whether the moderation muddle will hold up its Class XII results. Delay in results will have a spiralling effect, hitting the admission calendar.
Besides, a move to apply moderation, or not apply it, will impact candidates across boards.
On Wednesday, the HRD ministry decided to seek legal opinion on the Delhi HC’s order. Sources said CBSE is likely to move a special leave petition in Supreme Court against the verdict. CBSE, along with 31 school education boards, had reached a consensus on April 24, 2017, on not moderating marks and around seven boards have already declared their results based on that understanding.
Thirty-two education boards, including Central Board of Secondary Education and CISCE, had agreed to create a “level playing field for all students” and to buck the trend in recent years of college admission cut-offs reaching unprecedented highs.
Following the high court’s order, the matter was discussed at a meeting called by Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar with the secretary of school education and the chairperson of CBSE on Wednesday morning.
“In the meeting, it was decided that a legal opinion is to be taken on the matter as well as explore other options,” a senior ministry official said after the meeting.
“Further action can be taken only after legal opinion, which is awaited. The fact that some of the schools boards, for example in Punjab, have already declared their results without moderation is creating confusion.”
While HRD sources said that “results should not be delayed because of this issue”, CBSE sources added that nothing can be said for certain till a final decision in the matter is taken.
“If CBSE decides to act as per the high court’s order, there could be issues with other boards that have announced their results,” a board official said. “And in case CBSE seeks a review of the court’s order, it could delay the results.”
Schools in the capital felt that such decisions should not have been taken in haste even though a majority admitted that inflated scores in the board results were also a matter of concern.
Any new measure should be taken in consultation with all stakeholders, including the school teachers and subject experts,” said Tania Joshi, principal, Indian School.
“Even if the government was planning a move like this, it should not have been decided in the middle of the exam period, but from next year. The high court’s order has further confused the whole issue.”
Meena Sharma, the principal of Government Girls’ School, Rohini Sector 17, questioned the end result of moderation. “Grace marks to enable a student who has scored 28 to finally get 33 marks to help him/her pass is fine,” she contented. “But when a child scores 65% in the pre-boards and 95% in the board exams, it raises questions.”
Former chairperson of CBSE, Ashok Kumar Ganguly, called for the intervention of the HRD ministry in stopping the misuse of the moderation system.
The concept of moderation was evolved to prevent any disadvantage to a section of students due to varying difficulty levels or inadequacy in the exam system. Instead, it became a source of competition among school boards. In fact, even CBSE joined the competition, as reported in TOI last year, when it spiked the results of its all-India mathematics exam by 16 marks and those for the Delhi region by 15 marks. This resulted in lakhs of students scoring unusually high marks in the subject.
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