Scoring high marks in board exams

It is a common experience that students today are scoring more marks in state and national-level board exams than earlier. A direct result of this ‘grade inflation’ is that the cut-offs for college admissions have been rising steadily over the years. In the short run, higher marks may seem like a win-win deal, as it makes students, schools, parents and politicians all happy. Nevertheless, overall it has long-term detrimental effects on the education system.

The ever-increasing test scores mean ‘grade inflation’, which is an international phenomenon, but the situation in India is somewhat unique. The rise in marks in India is also a result of competition among boards. In many states, students from both state and central boards compete for college seats. The college board selects the students on the basis of their marks in the examinations. Normally no adjustments are made while comparing between education boards. It is worth noting that in the 1970s and in the 1980s, central boards started awarding higher marks to students in areas where they felt they had to do so to make their students competitive with the respective state boards. Gradually other education boards also realized that they too can do the same or they had to do this too. Then slowly everyone started giving more marks. Today, it is common to get 100% marks or close to it in every subject. Interestingly, in Nagaland, the average of the highest marks in the board between 1975-79 was 75.4.per cent, which increased to 89.9 per cent in 1980–84 and to 97.6 per cent in 2015. The average for the four years from 2020, including the Covid period, is 98.8 per cent. The situation is more or less similar in other states as well.

Top students have started getting more and more marks year after year. It also has many negative consequences. Firstly, it increases the pressure on students, parents and schools to score high marks. Stress also increases regarding admission in college. Students are forced to pay tuition. Another serious problem is that the Boards have also started reducing the difficulty and type of questions in the exam, so that more and more students can score high marks. They give marks very liberally. The race to score high marks increases the importance of marks and places less emphasis on teaching and learning. Researchers have found that even if mediocre studies lead to top grades, it works against hard work at studies. At the same time, higher marks also create a false impression that students and the education system are doing better.

In a country like India, where a vast majority of the population takes exams, there is an excellent solution called Criterion Reference, which involves providing ‘percentile scores’ instead of using percentages or grades. Be it the top 0.1 per cent students in Delhi or Tamil Nadu, they should be treated equally as the best. It should not be seen that in Tamil Nadu board, students got maximum 90 marks and in Delhi 95 maximum. Delhi’s best and the best of Tamil Nadu should be considered at the same level. Percentile scores can be used to identify groups of top performers on each test. This is an effective method where the number of examinees is large and varied.

One of the recommendations of the National Education Policy 2020 is to ensure uniformity of academic standards among students across all school boards. The government is in the process of setting up a National Assessment Center for this purpose. Use of percentile in board exams can be an important method and can help in improving the quality of education in the country.