Several students, parents and educationists criticised the formula announced by the Central Board of Secondary Education for awarding marks to its outgoing Class XII students, especially the weightage given to their Class X and XI scores.
The critics said there was no correlation between the subjects taught in Classes XII and X, making such weightage irrelevant, and that students generally did not take the Class XI exam seriously and underperformed in it.
“The CBSE took the past three years’ performance into consideration (as a tool for moderation) to ensure there was no spiking of marks by schools,” Priyadarshi Nayak, principal of Doon Public School in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, said.
“I have a sense that giving weightage to the Class X marks will not make much of a difference. However, a section of students and teachers will have concerns about any formula.”
C.B. Sharma, former chairman of the National Institute of Open Schooling, a national board for non-formal students, underlined that the Class X syllabus contained a “generic” paper like “science” while the Class XII curriculum had separate physics, chemistry and biology papers.
Sharma said, “Commerce students study subjects like accountancy and business studies, but the Class X syllabus offers no such subject. So commerce students’ Class X scores have little relevance to their Class XII performance.”
Shreya Sasmal, a Class XII student from Delhi Public School, Udhampur (Jammu), said the credibility of any assessment without a board exam being held would remain questionable.
“I would have been happier had the exams not been cancelled. The Class XII certificate carries a lot of importance throughout a student’s career. Now they have worked out a formula, but the credibility of the certificate may be affected,” she said.
Janvi Raj, who studies at a CBSE school in Sharjah, was unhappy with the weightage given to the Class XI exam. She said students tend to take it easy in Class XI, which falls between the two “stressful” years of preparing for the Class X and XII board exams.
Under the formula, the year out of the previous three in which a school’s students did the best in the Class XII boards is to be taken as the reference, and the marks for 2020-21 are not to diverge beyond a prescribed range from that year’s.