Survey Says Over 60% Students Do Not Want CBSE To Grade Them Based On Internal Assessments

The XII graders of the 2020-21 batch have been through a lot of uncertainty. Schools were closed indefinitely, right when they entered Class XII. A few months later, they thought that things were all getting back to normal and that they would seamlessly write their board examination.

Article Featured On: Edex Live – The New Indian Express

The XII graders of the 2020-21 batch have been through a lot of uncertainty. Schools were closed indefinitely, right when they entered Class XII. A few months later, they thought that things were all getting back to normal and that they would seamlessly write their board examination. But that was when the second wave of COVID began. After months of petitions and protests, the examinations were finally cancelled on June 1.

While the CBSE has not confirmed its evaluation criteria, there have been speculations that the board might resort to internal assessments to ascertain marks. In fact, there have been multiple hashtag campaigns, demanding that this be the method used. However, a survey conducted by The WorldGrad, an EdTech platform says that 60 per cent of the 12th graders whom they surveyed were against internal assessments. The sample size was over 4000.

“Students were not able to prepare for pre-boards properly due to COVID cases at their homes. Most students didn’t even go to school to write their exams. Students will fail if the pre-boards are considered as we were not able to write the pre-board papers properly,” says Jhalak Shrivastav, a XII grader from Budaun. Rashi Chaturvedi, a Gurugram-based student echoes a similar sentiment. “Pre-board exams are usually much harder and the correction is stricter. This prevents students from getting complacent and performing better in the board exams. But if these marks are considered final then it would be unfair to students as they don’t reflect how much students would score on the final board exams,” she says.

At the same time, most of the students were relieved to hear that the exams were cancelled. But, there were exceptions too. For instance, Parvathy Rajeev, a student from Kochi says, “As students, we have been looking forward to these exams since kindergarten and preparing for the last few years to do our best. I was very disappointed to hear that I won’t get a chance to prove myself,” she says. So, what could be a solution, in this case, we wondered. Parvathy suggests a full-length online examination. Rashi is also all in for online assessments, but she recommends an assignment or a short test.

“The government can think of giving an equal percentage to every student, which seems impractical. But that wouldn’t hamper our admissions, Otherwise, every college should conduct an aptitude test before admitting students, without any consideration/reservation on the basis of minority, caste etc.,” says Lalima, a student from Thiruvananthapuram. Jhalak, on the other hand, suggests an evaluation based on how much a student scored in their classes IX, X and XI.

Author: Deepak Shukla