Mumbai: Class X students with poor scores through year hit?

Mumbai: As most boards have called off class X exams and explore a school-based assessment, teachers and parents feel not only could grades differ from one school and board to another, it could be a raw deal for students who did not perform well through the year.

Earlier this week,

CBSE and CISCE announced that class X exams

were cancelled and that they would issue criterion on how students must be marked. The boards said students could appear for offline exams whenever they are conducted. International boards — IB and Cambridge — have proposed a school-assessed grades process. Maharashtra

school education minister Varsha Gaikwad

said the state board would consult experts to consider the option. SSC exams have currently been postponed.

But with marking expected to be decentralized, teachers are worried about the students’ performance. “Prelims are not mandated by the board, and this year many schools did not take exams due to logistics. Many of our students were out of the city and had limited connectivity. These students have not even studied well throughout the year. Every school has done what was in the best interest of students during the tiring times of pandemic,” said Jagdish Indalkar, principal, KVK Public School, Ghatkopar.

Another teacher from a state board school pointed out that their children could be at a loss. “International and national boards follow a regular assessment pattern through assignments and tests throughout the year. In state board schools, a lot depends on the final exam. We usually see students score lower in prelims than boards as they have an extra month to study and can rectify what they did wrong in practice tests,” she said.

Experts said there was an urgent need for uniformed guidelines to avoid inflation of marks. “I would have preferred an assessment framework developed by the central government for ‘internal assessments’, which every education board and state could follow, to ensure a common level playing field and equity among learners. Its absence could lead to huge inflation of marks and disparity,” said Francis Joseph of School Leaders’ Network Foundation.