JAY JOSHI
Goa Board declares its class X results today. As students across the state wait in anticipation, one cannot help but notice a change that has come over the years in our examination system. Students have begun to score higher marks. Upon asking a class X student about their scores, one is more likely to hear that they have scored between 80percent to over 95precent in many cases. Similarly, the passing percentage of the schools too is soaring.
The key question here is how does one interpret this development?
Have the students become brighter over the years? Have they figured out a formula to beat the system? Or have the exams ceased to be challenging? TG Life spoke to people from the educational sector to find out reasons behind this the high scores.
“A few decades ago, people who had scored around 60percent too achieved success in fields such as medical or engineering, but today, even students scoring 80-90percent are nowhere on national level. This shows that the quality has suffered somewhere,” says Anant Agni, headmaster of Ravindra Kelekar Dnyan Mandir, Margao. “Students are easily scoring in the range of 90s. Now, I am not saying that it is the fault of the examination system. It is not so. I believe that the system is not being implemented properly. For instance, we have internal marks and external marks. And internal marks are easily given to students. This gets them an advantage of around 15-20percent directly. Hence, the score jumps even if they score relatively less in external exams,” says the academician.
Khushi Prabhu Desai, a student of class XI at Presentation Convent Higher Secondary School, Aquem also toes the same line.
“Scoring in high school has certainly become easier today. As a result, there is a gap between class X and class XI. When students come to class XI, they sometimes feel that the level here is high, and they cannot understand how they cannot cope up with it despite scoring good marks in class X. There is a need to raise the bar of class X in order to bridge this gap,” says Prabhudesai.
Subhash Jan, a teacher at Ameya Higher Secondary School, Curti agrees. “Students scoring good marks in class X often struggle in class XI and higher classes, because they do not have conceptual clarity. In fact, after this point, their percentage drops by close to 20percent,” says Jan. One of the reasons behind the percentage dropping could also be that the students with high marks often opt for Science stream without checking what their actual aptitude is. While internal marks give a student some degree of boost, this does not in any way improve the quality of the student, says Jan.
All things said and done, the system should focus on contributing to the skill and knowledge of the students. While the fact that students’ scores are improving is indeed a good news, what really needs to be seen is how these high scores are being achieved, and whether they are delivering the outcomes both academia, industry and the students themselves seek.
