CBSE Class 12 results: Scoring 99%-100% shows Indian education system is failing
The just-declared CBSE Class 12 results reveal the paradox at the heart of the Indian education system. It sounds strange and almost surreal how, on one hand, we have a number of almost-perfect scorers coming out of schools and colleges every year and, on the other, millions of those same graduates who cannot find jobs.
And even if they do manage to land a job, it's either with a not-so-desirable pay package, or something that's not very different from their much-inferior batchmates who could never score enough to enter the country's elite colleges.
And it's not just the once-perfect scorers who are demoralised with lack of jobs, employers too are equally distressed because they can't seem to find qualified employees.
While it's true the Indian economy has failed to generate enough jobs, the number of unemployable candidates too is rising in India — those who have suitable degrees (with exceptional scores) but not the desirable skills to be employed.
For instance, according to this 2016 India Today report, the country has 6,214 engineering and technology institutions which enrol 2.9 million students. Around 1.5 million engineers are released into the job market every year. But the dismal state of higher education in India ensures that they simply do not have adequate skills to be employed or to continue on their jobs.
And it's not just with doctors, engineers or all those graduates from elite arts and commerce colleges who have marksheets with excellent scores to support their credentials.
Then what exactly is the reason for the lack of employability?
Maybe the answer lies in all those board exams and their results and the hype created around those near-perfect scores. Or those cut-off lists displayed across the cream of the crop colleges.
Indian educators too are well aware of the problems within the system and have been trying to move away from the excessive focus on exams and the marks scored. But seeking other yardsticks for academic excellence (other than perfect scores) will take time, especially in a country of over 1.2 billion people who have learnt no other meaning of education so far.
Every year experts observe with gaping mouths — earlier one could imagine 100 per cent marks in Maths, Accountancy, Physics and other sciences. But now students have been scoring 100 per cent even in subjects like English and History.
This is not to say that it's bad to score good marks, but are these perfect or near-perfect scores good enough to prove one's ability?
Is it at all going to make one employable, considering the fact that job is the ultimate goal of education in a country like India where there are little employment opportunities?
Or are our schoolchildren really getting so smart that they all score perfect?
Not really.
According to this Hindustan Times analysis, a student scoring 88 per cent in Class 12 boards in 2015 would have scored 78 per cent a decade earlier.
HT claimed to have analysed Class 12 CBSE results from 2004 to 2015 and calculated how board exam scores have increased over the years. The same report says the CBSE's practice of providing grace marks, "has also seen an overall increase in the average percentage of students. While percentage of students scoring more than 80 per cent constantly increases, things don't not change much for those below 40 per cent".
Although the CBSE did try to change the moderation policy (the practice of giving grace marks), this doesn't seem to be the only problem.
Experts believe there are a number of reasons behind this. According to this India Today report, though the quantity of universities, colleges and programmes are going on increasing in the country, the lack of quality education persists. Rote-learning methods, profit-hungry managements, lack of skill education, corruption, shortage of faculty (both in quantity and quality) are the major issues plaguing Indian education system.
Students are collecting their degrees and marks despite not being skilled enough to be a productive part of the Indian economy.
While it's good to be thrilled over those unbelievable scorecards, it's high time the education system realises if the current method of marking and overall education is really reflective of the students' true abilities.
Isn't it time we stop celebrating (read overhyping) such unrealistic achievements?