Promoted sans examinations : New line of thinking
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: July 31, 2021 -

The Council of Higher Secondary Education, Manipur (COHSEM), Council of Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE which conducts the ICSE and ISC examinations) and the Central Board of Secondary Education have shown how students can be graded or marked sans the annual three hour ritual known as examinations.

This obviously cannot be the best option to test the students but yet at the same time the Covid induced compulsion to do away with the Class X and Class XII examinations should be taken as the first opportunity to study how the merit of a student can be tested without solely relying on the three hours annual examination.

Certain parameters were taken into account while grading the students and it meant taking the year long performance of the students into account.

A similar approach too must have been adopted by the other State boards where the Class X and Class XII board examinations were done away with this year.

A sure indication that the merit of a student can be, assessed without the three hour annual exam, which has down the years come to denote the ultimate test of the young students.

Let the Covid induced compulsion open the avenues for schools and teachers across the country and more particularly for Manipur to see how the performance of a young student can be taken into consideration beyond how he or she writes during the three hour period inside the examination hall.

Let this be the beginning of a system where the merit of a student can be taken into consideration taking his or her performance from say Class VII while preparing the Class X results.

The details may be worked out by the Government in consultation with teachers and school managements from across the State.

Such an approach can go some way in ensuring that the performance of a student need not necessarily hinge entirely on how he or she writes during the three hour exercise known as the annual examination. This is an option which the State Government may seriously study.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and while the different boards and councils have adapted t6 the challenge of the time, it remains to be seen if anything worthwhile has been learnt from the new experience.

At the higher level, some universities such as Delhi University has already gone ahead and conducted the examinations for its graduate and post graduate students via the Open Book Exam (OBE) and here is a lesson that there is no permanency in how the pursuit of education may be conducted.

It should also not be forgotten that the OBE was made possible via the internet and such a model would have been unthinkable in the pre-internet days.

Herein lies the truism that technology cannot be divested from -any stream of learning.

Let this also be a lesson to the State Government and the different schools and institutions that the time calls for embracing all the merits that technology has to offer and utilise the same for the benefits of all.

This is one prominent point that should be learnt from the numerous Covid induced restrictions on the lives of the people.