News Analysis India

Tag: Class X exams

  • Class X evaluation policy ensures no injustice to students: CBSE to Delhi HC

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Thursday told the Delhi High Court that the evaluation policy for this year’s Class 10th board examination has been prepared keeping in mind that no school should be able to do injustice with the students and marks be awarded based on the learning.

    The board said that responsibility has been given to the ‘result committee’ to ensure just, fair and reliable result and a similar policy with extended liberty has been prepared in Class-12th policy which has already been approved by the Supreme Court.

    Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, class 10th exams were cancelled by the board and an evaluation policy was formulated to evaluate students this year.

    The CBSE’s counsel submitted before a bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh that there was no illegality in taking reference of previous year’s result of class 10th of a school in order to maintain standardization in the result.

    “I submit that, while formulating Evaluation Policy for Class X, there is neither any abuse of power by the answering respondent (CBSE) nor there is failure of governance as the said Evaluation Policy has been formulated having holistic approach and ensuring that no student is prejudiced by rationalising internal assessment performance of students and bringing semblance of parity amongst the assessment of different schools,” the board said in its affidavit filed under the name of Controller of Examination, CBSE, Sanyam Bhardwaj.

    Advocate Rupesh Kumar, representing CBSE, said the board has taken all the steps to ensure fairness in the results and no student will have any grievance with regard to the evaluation policy of class 10th.

    The affidavit said the policy has been prepared by a team of experts from the schools and CBSE and while preparing the scheme, it has been kept in mind that no school should be able to do injustice with the students and marks be awarded based on the learning of the student.

    It said that result should not be more than the best result of past three results and while allowing moderation to the result committee, limits have been fixed.

    The court was hearing a petition by NGO ‘Justice for All’ claiming that the policy of the board for calculating marks of class 10 students based on the internal assessment by schools was unconstitutional and required to be modified.

    On the NGO’s submission that the board should make an arrangement for uploading the soft copy of the marking scheme followed by schools, the CBSE said result prepared with the petitioner’s suggestions will damage the credibility and image of the CBSE across the globe resulting disadvantage to the students in future.

    It also said that to ensure fair and unbiased evaluation, the Evaluation Policy for Class 10th provides that each school shall form a ‘Result Committee’ consisting of Principal and seven teachers for finalising the results and out of the seven teachers, five would be from the school and two from neighbouring schools.

    The high court has now listed the matter for August 6 for hearing rebuttal arguments of the counsel for the NGO.

    Advocates Khagesh Jha and Shikha Sharma Bagga, appearing for the NGO, had contended that the CBSE’s evaluation policy for this year’s Class 10 board examination did not have any grievance mechanism for students.

    The counsel had emphasised that this year the schools were free to have their own marking policy and that a student has no way to know how he/she was marked and thus like previous years, students should have access to the documents based on which evaluation is done.

    The high court had on June 2 sought response of the Centre, Delhi government and CBSE on the NGO’s petition.

    The plea said, “The policy of moderating the average marks assessed by the school, based on the historical performance of the previous average result of the school, in terms of the best overall performance of the school would be injustice to the students as the performance of school is not relatable in any manner with the performance of the student.”

    It has also said moderating the marks in consonance with the overall average score of the district, national and state average “was absolutely unreasonable, illogical and punitive for the students of a school which would appear in the board exams for the first time”, with no previous data of performance.

    The NGO has alleged that it can also lead to the manipulation of marks and exploitation, extortion of the students and parents.

  • Delhi HC pulls up NGO for moving court at 11th hour for direction to CBSE schools on class X marks

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday pulled up an NGO for “publicity stunt” in approaching court at the 11th hour seeking direction to the CBSE-affiliated schools here to publish on their websites the rationale document of assessment criteria for class 10 students before finalising results for greater transparency.

    The high court said that the NGO should not behave like a commercial litigant and it has to be at a higher pedestal. “You think you will come at the 11th hour and get everything stayed. It is publicity stunt. It is in a very very bad taste. It is very very unfair what you are doing to us. Don’t behave like a private litigant. You do espouse petitions on public interest, you can’t behave like an ordinary. You have to espouse much higher cause,” said a vacation bench of Justices Manmohan and Navin Chawla, constituted to hear the matter.

    The court said that it cannot be allowed to indulge in bench hunting. After some arguments, the counsel for the NGO, ‘Justice for All’, said he wished to withdraw the application. The court allowed him to withdraw the application and granted liberty to file a plea seeking early hearing of the main petition, listed for hearing in August, before the roster bench.

    The application for the interim relief was filed in a pending petition in which the petitioner NGO, Justice For All, has sought to modify Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) policy for tabulation of marks of class 10 board exams 2021 based on internal assessment conducted by the schools.

    Advocate Khagesh B Jha, representing the NGO, said he had not filed the application for the interim relief with the main petition since the cause has arisen now as after issuance of notice on the petition by the court on June 2, a fresh FAQs have been published by the CBSE on June 9.

    He said the last date to upload the marks and internal assessment of class 10 students by schools at CBSE website is June 30.

    The application, through advocate Shikha Sharma Bagga, sought an interim order to direct all the schools affiliated by the board to publish the rationale document for devised criteria for the assessment of students of class 10 on their respective websites, before calculating the result and uploading the same on the CBSE portal, to bring transparency.

    It said the students should be able access the document and raise grievances with the CBSE well in time along with the sagacious grievance redressal mechanism by the board for the students.

    The application said that after issuance of notice by the court on June 2, a fresh FAQs have been published by the CBSE on June 9, and it became clear that there is no modification in their alleged arbitrary policy of moderation of marks yet, which is in violation of Article 21 (right to life) of the Constitution.

    “The present policy is absolutely discriminatory, unfair, illogical and would result in huge manipulation of marks by the schools, based on the performance of the senior batch of students of that particular school,” it said.

    The high court had on June 2 sought response of the Centre, Delhi government and CBSE on the NGO’s petition claiming that the policy of the board for calculating marks of class 10 students based on the internal assessment by schools was unconstitutional and required to be modified.

    In its petition, the NGO has said: “The policy of moderating the average marks assessed by the school, based on the historical performance of the previous average result of the school, in terms of the best overall performance of the school would be injustice to the students as the performance of school is not relatable in any manner with the performance of the student.”

    It has also said moderating the marks in consonance with the overall average score of the district, national and state average “was absolutely unreasonable, illogical and punitive for the students of a school which would appear in the board exams for the first time”, with no previous data of performance.

    The NGO has alleged that it can also lead to the manipulation of marks and exploitation, extortion of the students and parents.

  • West Bengal govt sets up expert committee to decide on class X, XII exams

    By Express News Service
    KOLKATA: The West Bengal government formed an expert committee to review covid pandemic situation and recommend whether to or not to conduct Class X and XII exams of the state education board. The government also sought an opinion from the common people, parents or guardians and students through email by 2 pm on Monday.

    Earlier, the state education department had announced that Class XII board exam would be held at the end of July and the Class X exam will be in the first week of August. It was said the exams would be conducted on compulsory subjects only and students would be allowed to appear in the exams in the same school where they are studying.

    The expert committee will also recommend the government if the exams will be conducted, what will be the mode of conduction and if not, what will be the mode of evaluation criteria for the assessment.