Although college administrations are obliged to admit students on the basis of grades awarded by state, pan-India and offshore exam boards on the presumption of parity inter se, some boards are more equal than others
THE IDES OF MARCH are stressful times for an estimated 14 million class X and 9 million class XII students across the country, who will write their school-leaving exams this month.
The annual board exams are vitally important for students as the average percentage or grades awarded to them will determine the colleges into which they will be admitted later this year (July/August). Given the reality that only a few dozen of India’s 35,000 colleges offer acceptable quality undergraduate education, high grades — especially for students writing the class XII boards — are of critical importance. The country’s top-ranked undergrad colleges — St. Stephen’s, Delhi, Shri Ram College of Commerce, St. Xavier’s (Mumbai and Kolkata) among others — routinely prescribe 95 percent-plus admission cut-offs, which means students who average less (unless they are from reserved categories) are denied admission into colleges of their choice.
For parents too, the last mile before board exams is a season of anxiety because high grades can ease a child’s passage into top-notch Central government or state government-aided private colleges where tuition fees have been static since 1950. Although all government-aided private undergrad colleges levy other (maintenance, library, campus development etc) fees, they rarely aggregate Rs.40,000 per year. On the other hand, low grades in the school boards force students to settle for undergrad education in one of the 5,000 run-of-the-mill state government arts, science and commerce colleges where the quality of infrastructure, curriculums and learning outcomes is rock bottom.
The other alternative is to apply for admission into private professional colleges, the best of which levy tuition and other fees aggregating Rs.2-5 lakh per annum. In private colleges of professional education — especially institutions run by amoral politicians and real estate moguls — forced ‘donations’ ranging between Rs.10 lakh-3 crore (medical colleges) are often demanded and paid. In short, there’s a lot riding on high percentages/grades in school-leaving board exams.
Typically, under post-independence socialist Central planning which has plunged Indian education into a maze of confusion, there are 34 school boards countrywide authorised to prescribe syllabuses/curriculums, conduct class X and XII examinations and certify students. Inevitably the quality of education prescribed, conduct and supervision of examinations and the value of certificates issued by each board differs. For instance, the market value of school-leaving certificates issued by the state education boards of Uttar Pradesh or Bihar — states notorious for administrative corruption and rackets in education — is much less than of certification issued by the exam boards of better-governed states such as Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Karnataka which rank high in the annual education development index of the Delhi-based National University of Educational Planning & Administration (NUEPA).
Moreover, confusion about the relative value of school leaving certificates issued by state examination boards is confounded by the higher market value accorded to certificates of the two major Delhi-based pan-India school boards — the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) — which together have ‘affiliated’ (i.e, certified as adhering to superior infrastructure provision, teacher-pupil ratio and teaching-learning norms) over 17,000 of the country’s top-ranked primary-secondary schools.
Against this backdrop of uncertainty about the relative value of school leaving certification issued by 34 examination boards, it’s pertinent to note that the country’s Central and state government-owned and aided arts, science and commerce colleges are obliged to give equal weightage to the school-leaving certificates of all state examination boards while drawing up annual admission lists. This despite common knowledge that the CBSE and CISCE boards have a far superior and rigorous academic curriculum than state boards, and that the exam boards of some states are better in every way than of others.
To add to the confusion of college managements, there’s the aggressive entry into India of offshore examination boards such as Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) and Edexcel UK; International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) Geneva, and Advanced Placement (USA), offering globally benchmarked syllabuses, curriculums and certification. Although professional — especially engineering and medical — colleges which obviously don’t trust the certificates of school exam boards, conduct their own entrance exams, arts, science and commerce colleges have to admit students on the basis of grades awarded to them by state, pan-India and offshore exam boards on the presumption of parity inter se, an absurd forced equity which is playing havoc with exam and admission systems countrywide.
According to Dr. A.R. Vasavi, professor of sociology at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) who was recently awarded the Rs.55 lakh Infosys Prize for Social Sciences 2013 for breakthrough research spanning “a remarkable range in sociology and anthropology”, proliferation of school boards is inevitable given India’s federal structure and establishment of linguistic states. “While state examination boards that cater to geographical, cultural and linguistic differences are acceptable as necessary, the mushrooming of various types of schools is indicative of growing marketisation of education. Such diversification indicates not a plurality of the schooling system but a heterogeneity which denies the development of a common school system … working against the possibility of enabling equality of educational opportunity,” says Vasavi.
NEVERTHELESS AFTER taking a swipe in the fashion of academics who routinely deplore the emergence of high-end, quality education focused and increasingly popular private schools in K-12 education — a market response to the pathetic quality of education dispensed by the country’s 1 million government schools — Vasavi concedes that a uniform examination system which “will enable students from diverse schooling systems to be assessed on equal grounds” for admission into the best undergraduate colleges has become necessary.
Common school-leaving exams are normative in most countries worldwide. For instance, all higher secondary school-leavers are obliged to write the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) in the US, the IGCSE ‘A’ level exam in the UK and the dreaded gaokao in China. In these countries, grades in common national exams determine admission into undergraduate colleges and universities. Thus there is a transparent system on the basis of which school-leavers are admitted into higher education institutions, especially government-funded universities.
Clearly with 29 state examination boards, two pan-India and several offshore boards certifying school-leavers as eligible for undergraduate college education, there’s a strong case for a common school-leaving examination. It would bring transparency into arts, science and commerce college admissions to “enable equality of educational opportunity”.
Currently college managements are obliged to give equal weightage to school leaving certificates of all 34 examination boards countrywide as well as the handful of offshore boards, despite a general awareness that some state boards are notorious for too-liberal evaluation and assessment and soft on examination malpractices. Moreover, it’s common knowledge and widely accepted that in terms of syllabuses prescribed, student performance evaluation and infrastructure and facilities, the pan-India CBSE, CISCE and offshore (CIE, IBO, AP) boards are streets ahead of state boards — an evolutionary reality which makes a strong case for a common national school-leaving examination. However this is likely to prove a difficult — if not impossible — proposition.
“State examination boards have become a massive vested interest for politicians of all states, and for sub-nationalist and other reasons, none of them will agree to replace them with a common national exam. State boards are a huge income source for corrupt politicians who routinely run teacher recruitment and transfer, textbooks writing, and printing rackets. Huge payouts are made by minimally qualified teachers anxious to serve in unaccountable government schools which pay handsome Sixth Pay Commission salaries. Moreover, textbooks writing contracts are awarded to unqualified kith and kin and printed in the millions before being dumped free of charge on school children statewide and debited to the budget. Mass teacher absenteeism is seldom punished. The consequence is that teaching-learning standards and learning outcomes are continuously falling in government — particularly state government — schools as elaborated by Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report 2013. But politicians don’t care as long as they can milk the state education system. They have a deep vested interest in the status quo and will never accept the idea of a national test, even in core subjects,” says a disillusioned former vice chancellor of Bangalore University.
ACCORDING TO Dr. Anita Madan, the Mumbai-based head of curriculum development of the Eurokids chain of 880 preschools countrywide who is currently researching the relative merits of examination boards, a continuously rising number of parents are pulling their children out of free-of-charge state government schools to enroll them in CBSE and CISCE-affiliated schools. “State board schools suffer critical disadvantages such as low-quality textbooks, poorly trained teachers, carelessly framed question papers, corruption and exam paper assessment rackets. Therefore as soon as they can afford to, parents are moving their children into CBSE and CISCE schools where teaching-learning standards are more rigorous and learning outcomes superior,” says Madan.
Consequently, with the steady expansion of India’s 300 million-strong middle class which has identified quality education as the passport to material success, private school promoters are signing up with the pan-India CBSE and CISCE boards, which are steadily increasing the number of affiliated institutions. Meanwhile high-end schools which educate children of the upper middle classes and the urban elite, are rushing to affiliate with foreign examination boards, CIE and IBO in particular. Moreover, with the managements of all school examination boards having discerned the huge potential of the Indian market hosting the world’s largest child population estimated at a massive 480 million, a silent but intense race is on to increase affiliations and win influence among fast-multiplying private schools.
Inevitably, the major motivation of the premier exam boards is to increase the number of affiliated schools to earn additional revenue. All schools pay institutional affiliation fees ranging from Rs.10,000-7 lakh per year. Moreover, every student writing the class X and XII exams pays examination fees ranging from Rs.700-1,000 to India-based boards and Rs.4,600-16,440 to offshore exam boards. In addition, affiliated schools also pay teacher training, consultancy, and other services fees. Therefore, affiliated schools are a captive market and a perennial revenue source for the affiliating examination board. Hence the scramble to influence trustees, college principals and university administrations (so they give sufficient weight to their certification), and last but not least the parents community which although divided on academic credentials and relative merits of the country’s 34 examination boards, often choose or reject schools on the basis of their board affiliation.
Broadly speaking, the country’s most preferred, top-ranked schools are affiliated with CISCE, CBSE and the offshore Cambridge International Examinations, International Baccalaureate Organisation and Advanced Placement which constitute the premier league of school examination boards. Rarely if at all, do state board affiliated schools make it into the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings league tables.
The Delhi-based CBSE is the largest school-leaving examinations board with 15,000 secondary schools countrywide affiliated with it. Promoted in 1929 as a school examination board for government servants in several territories of north and central India, it was reconstituted and established in 1962 as a self-financing and autonomous secondary school examinations board with jurisdiction over affiliated institutions across India and abroad. But although it is proclaimed as autonomous, in reality CBSE is supervised by and reports to the Union human resource development (formerly education) ministry.
Consequently, all Central government primary-secondary schools including Navodaya Vidyalaya, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jawaharlal Navodaya Vidyalaya, Army and defence services, Indian Railways and captive public sector enterprises schools are automatically and mandatorily affiliated with CBSE. Apart from national school-leaving examinations (written by 1.1 million class X and 815,000 class XII students in 2013), CBSE also conducts several other major public examinations including the NEET (National Eligibility Entrance Test, formerly AIPMT) for admission into medical and dental institutions written by 221,867 students in 2012; All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) written by 1.07 million students, and the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) written by 900,815 in-service and aspiring teachers across the country in 2012.
Unsurprisingly, over the past half century CBSE has transformed into a massive quasi-monopoly public sector enterprise with 10,000 employees, estimated annual revenue of Rs.500 crore; total assets of Rs. 928.88 crore including investments from income accrued of Rs.701.54 crore (2011-12). Nevertheless Vineet Joshi, an alumnus of IIT-Kanpur and IIFT, Delhi who began his career in the Manipur IAS cadre in 1992 and was plucked from obscurity and appointed a secretary in the HRD ministry by the late Arjun Singh — arguably the worst HRD/education minister in Indian history — in 2004, and became chairman of CBSE in 2010, doesn’t feel obliged to explain the rationale of his several innovations including CCE (continuous comprehensive evaluation), optionalisation of the class X board exam and other reforms in the CBSE syllabus/curriculum to the public. Repeated calls and emailed questions to Joshi who with typical IAS hauteur operates through an army of flunkies, remained unanswered.
“Joshi is a typical kiss-up, kick-down bureaucrat. No sooner than Arjun Singh and Kapil Sibal made a mess of school education with their ham-handed interventions by way of ill-considered Chairman Mao-style proclamations including the hastily drafted RTE Act (2009), Joshi hurried to implement them. This sycophancy has done great harm to CBSE schools, resulting in considerable loss of reputation for the board and increased the popularity of CISCE and foreign examination boards,” says the principal of a top-ranked Delhi-based CBSE-affiliated school speaking to EW on condition of anonymity.
On the other hand Dr. Rev.Jose Aikara, a divinity graduate of the Pontifical Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Alwaye (Kerala), founder principal of the De Paul schools in Berhampur (Odisha) and Mysore and incumbent chairman of CISCE, the country’s second largest school board with 2,000 of India’s most admired primaries-secondaries (Shri Ram School, Delhi; Doon School, Dehradun; Cathedral and John Connon, Mumbai; Bishop Cotton, Shimla and Bangalore; St. Paul’s and St. Joseph’s, Darjeeling) affiliated with it, is more forthcoming about the culture, aims and objectives of the Delhi-based board. Established in 1958 in the teeth of opposition by Hindi language zealots by the University of Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate with the assistance of the Inter-State Board of Anglo-Indian Education to offer English-medium primary-secondary education, CISCE’s class X ICSE exam was written by 140,693 students, and the class XII ISC exam by 64,044 students in 2013.
“More than half a century after this board was established with India boasting one of the largest English speaking populations worldwide, the tenacity of the founding fathers of CISCE has paid off. India has become a force to be reckoned with in the global ITES (information technology and enabled services) industry in which the lingua franca is English,” says Aikara who was elected chairman of the board in March 2011 for a three-year term.
Indeed it is widely accepted that the distinguishing feature of CISCE is that it prescribes rigorous English language and literature syllabuses for affiliated schools, with the study of classic texts mandatory for all students. On the other hand in CBSE schools the emphasis is on learning contemporary and “standard English”. Therefore the popular opinion is that CISCE schools provide better quality English and humanities education while CBSE-affiliated schools offer superior maths and science education, even as both are far ahead of state examination boards in terms of moving away from traditional rote to experiential learning. “The curriculum content of the two national boards for science and commerce streams is by and large similar, with CISCE according greater emphasis to maintaining higher standards of written and spoken English,” says Aikara.
Undoubtedly the two national boards set the pace for developing Indian primary-secondary education, inspiring state education boards to follow even if reluctantly, and they have raised school teaching-learning systems to near international standards in the first three decades after India’s independence. In universities abroad, the higher secondary (class XII) certification of CBSE and CISCE is unhesitatingly acknowledged as proof of acceptable quality pre-university education, subject to English language proficiency testing (although Aikara maintains that “most American, Australian and Canadian universities exempt ISC certificate holders from writing English proficiency and other foundation courses”).
But in the mid-1980s and particularly after liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991, middle class demand for ‘international’ K-12 education attracted several offshore examination boards to enter the school education market. In particular during the past two decades the UK-based Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) and the Geneva-based International Baccalaurate Organisation (IBO) have established strong and growing presence in Indian school education.
CIE, which claims a century old involvement with Indian education, is a global heavyweight. Early this year, it affiliated its 10,000th school worldwide, and its 337th in India when the Sagar School, Alwar (Rajasthan) signed up to offer the CIE curriculum.
“We offer the full range of qualifications to students in India including the Cambridge primary, secondary checkpoint, Cambridge IGCSE, Cambridge International AS and A levels. Last year, schools in India made over 58,000 entries for Cambridge qualifications, a rise of 15 percent over 2012. This number includes 34,000 entries for Cambridge IGCSE, our most popular qualification in India and 12,000 entries for the International AS and A levels. The subjects which are most popular among Indian students are physics, maths and chemistry. In 2013, schools worldwide made over 2 million entries for Cambridge examinations,” says Michael O’Sullivan, an alumnus of Oxford and Cambridge universities who assumed office as chief executive of CIE last April.
According to O’Sullivan, the distinguishing characteristic of CIE is that it offers 70 subjects across the spectrum to IGCSE students, and 55 at the AS and A levels. “CIE is the only international exam board that is part of a university — the University of Cambridge. We draw on the expertise of our university to contribute to learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. Our experiential approach ensures that learners not only develop knowledge and understanding but skills in creative thinking, enquiry and problem solving. The attainment of 21st century skills during school education is vital for success in higher education and work,” adds O’Sullivan.
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A similar messianic zeal to offer thoroughly contemporary curriculums, pedagogies and comprehensive teacher training “to empower teachers to build appropriate curriculum(s) that engage students while developing skills, approaches and values to ensure students succeed in their further studies and careers and yet contribute positively to the world”, is discernible in Ian Chambers, the Singapore-based director (Asia Pacific) of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO, estb.1968). IBO is a Geneva-based international examination board whose deeply researched syllabuses and curriculums based upon the experiential education philosophy of German educator Kurt Hahn (1886-1974), have impressed parents and students worldwide. Although IBO offers only two certification exams —its famous IB higher secondary (class XII) and IB career (vocational) diploma — the board’s primary, middle years (PYP and MYP) and IB diploma academic programmes are being followed in 3,716 schools in 147 countries.
“Since inception, the IBO has struck a balance between the pragmatic elements of valued credentials versus developing values. This is exemplified by the academic rigour of the IB Diploma bolstered by a core that develops critical thinking, independent learning, research and action. Extending from this, the IB Diploma and MYP are truly international in their dimension where concepts are valued and explored through enquiry and varied use of contexts. To learn through IB means to take responsibility for your own learning, developing skills and being prepared for authentic assessment rather than a regurgitation of knowledge,” says Chambers, an alumnus of Reading University, UK who served as the Delhi-based regional director of CIE for 11 years before jumping ship and signing up with IBO in 2011. Last year, 137,695 higher secondary (class XII) students worldwide, and 2,535 in India wrote the IB Diploma exam.
IBO’s emphasis on creative learning and pedagogy and high academic standards is seconded by Hamish McRae, associate editor of the London-based daily The Independent and author of the best-selling What Works — The Secrets of the World’s Best Organisations and Communities (see book review p. 102). McRae is of the opinion that as a global examination for school-leavers, the IB Diploma programme is “broader, more humane, more rigorous — well I suppose just better — than any national education system in the world”. “The momentum for its (phenomenal) growth is supplied entirely by the demand from schools and parents, spread largely by word of mouth. It is the most successful education programme in the world, but of course it would not have become that had it not also been driven by a sense of mission,” writes McRae..gif)
Quite clearly with India’s middle class expanding rapidly, the demand for qualitatively superior foundational K-12 education is increasing commensurately. After half century of somnambulance, following liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy during the past two decades as the hitherto autarkic Indian economy has begun to integrate with the world, the educated middle class and increasingly households at the bottom of the country’s iniquitous socio-economic pyramid, have begun to appreciate the value of real rather than ritual education. Suddenly there’s a great and rising clamour for meaningful quality early childhood, primary, secondary, and higher education for the world’s largest child and youth population.
Unfortunately, political leaders busily engaged with primitive capital accumulation and perpetuation of rapidly obsolescing dynasty, communal and caste politics, have remained oblivious to the liberating potential and transformational power of quality education. The silver lining is that the chief executives of India’s premier league school boards have become aware of this reality and are keenly competing to win hearts and minds of parent, teacher and student communities by innovating new standards in primary-secondary education. Paradoxically, the premier exam board play-offs staged across the country, bode well for its 1.30 million schools and 480 million children.