Students May Be Deprived of High Scores, Fear Experts

GUWAHATI: Former chairpersons and secretaries of the Board Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA) have said the Board’s decision not to adopt the moderation of marks policy in the evaluation of this year’s HSLC/AHM examinations, might go against the academic interest of students.

They said the students of the State have not been able to score high marks at par with their all-India counterparts due to lack of a moderation policy.

Under the moderation policy, examinees are awarded up to 15 percent extra marks in certain papers if the questions are deemed to be difficult.

Soon after the declaration of the results of the HSLC/AHM examinations 2019 on Wednesday, State Education Minister Siddhartha Bhattacharya told reporters that the number of distinct and star marks holders had declined this year as the SEBA did not follow the moderation of marks policy.

Quoting former CBSE chairman Ashok Ganguly, a former SEBA chairman said all school boards in India are awarding ‘special grace marks’ under the practice of ‘moderation’ to prevent difficulties for their students in getting admission to top colleges and universities in the country.

“The CBSE and majority of the State boards have followed such a policy this year too. I really wonder as to why the SEBA did not follow the policy with some scientific guidelines. Many meritorious students under the SEBA have received low marks than their counterparts in CBSE and other States boards,” a former SEBA secretary said.

Another former SEBA chairman said even though moderation of marks has always existed to even out different levels of difficulty and other factors in a board’s examination of such a huge scale. “It is time for the boards to conduct the exercise judiciously. Complete non-adherence to moderation of marks policy by the SEBA will, however, go against the interest of students,” he said.

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