Stung by its worst-ever school-leaving board exam results of the past six years, the Uttar Pradesh state government’s Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (secondary education board) has announced a series of measures to arrest the decline of teaching-learning standards in government school education. High school (class X) and intermediate (class XII) results declared in June witnessed the number of pass percentages dropping from 74.41 percent and 89.34 percent in 2007 to 40.07 percent and 65.05 percent respectively this year. Thus of the 4 million students statewide who wrote the class X and XI state board exams, more than half failed.
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The sharp decline in the number and percentage of students failing to clear the school-leaving exams of the state board (which it is common knowledge, requires less rigorous learning outcomes than the pan-India CBSE and CISCE examination boards) has come as a great shock to this populous (166 million) Hindi heartland state’s education bureaucracy, which in the years 2003-07 had reported almost 100 percent results. Now it is becoming increasingly clear that these remarkable pass percentages were the fallout of mass examination malpractice, and particularly relaxation of anti-copying laws by the Mulayam Singh administration whose Samajwadi party was voted out of office in May last year.
K.M. Tripathi, the state’s director of secondary education, concedes that it’s “a matter of great concern” that the state’s board exam results are heavily dependent upon government policies relating to exam malpractice. In March/April this year a record 1.4 lakh students across the state were marked absent from the final board exams. These were students who had registered for the exams, but opted out because of the strict anti-copying measures being enforced. Media reports indicate that when officials conducted thorough checks at exam centres to prevent students from taking chits, pocket guides and other material into examination halls across the state, many students fled the venues.
“Students who hadn’t studied during the year and were banking on copying and cheating to pass the exams, stayed away because of the strict laws against cheating. They had obviously disbelieved that the new government is serious about implementing the anti- copying measures,” says Tripathi.
Among the several initiatives the Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (MSP) has since decreed to improve school-leaving exam results the next time round (i.e. in March 2009), are continuous testing (monthly examinations) and an intensive teacher training drive. Currently only two examinations are held per academic year. “We fail to evaluate our children on a regular basis. Monthly exams will help teachers identify and train slow or laggard learners much before the final exams,” says Pratibha Tripathi, secretary of MSP. Simultaneously to improve teacher-pupil relationships, state government teachers will be put through intensive week-long training sessions.
Uncaring attitudes and irresponsibility of the teachers’ community has also invited the wrath of the state’s high court. On June 13 the court decreed that if students are absent from schools, headmasters would be held accountable. Passing an order on a petition filed by one V.D. Sharma, Justices Amar Saran and Shiv Shankar of the Lucknow high court observed that the quality of teaching in government schools needs vast improvement. The court ruled that if any child between the ages of six-14 is found loitering or working, it would be treated as a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution and action will be taken against the headmaster, teachers, pradhans and village panchayat officials.
Tripathi admits that a sincere multi-pronged effort to raise teaching-learning standards in the state’s 8,500 government secondaries is overdue. “Not too long ago, the UP exam board’s school-leaving certificates were well respected. Now they are subjected to suspicion and derision. We need a complete overhaul of the system starting from issuance of strict norms to schools doubling up as examination centres. There is a huge examination mafia that operates in the state and only stringent measures from the highest level will break their stranglehold on the system. We have made a beginning in this direction this year and are determined to implement the new school reforms package. As a consequence I expect better learning outcomes in government schools from this year itself,” he says.
But as in everything else in India’s most populous state, this great expectation is dependent upon sustained good governance. There’s the rub!
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)