Plain-speak: False-marking the future!!

The education system in the country stinks. The government does not know, except for the Kendriya Vidyalayas, to run good schools. Its interference is not supportive towards improvement of the means of delivering education but intrusive. No wonder, school after school in the private sector labels itself ‘International’ and come out of the purview of their respective state’s Boards. And these ‘international’ schools are also money spinners, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.

The arrest of students listed as ‘toppers’ in the 12th standard examination though undeserving, raises serious questions. Apart from being ignoramuses, and perhaps not inclined to study, were they the members of the likely gang that operated the scam? One understands the arrest of Bihar State Education Board chief Lalkeshwar Prasad, his wife, and a former MLA Usha Sinha, and also the principal of the college from where two students took the exam.
Of the 20 arrested, the students were also taken in non-bailable warrants by a court. The students who ‘topped’ were outed when a TV channel did a sting and found they could not answer simple questions but had been feted. That exposure was in itself a shame enough, but they are unlikely to be anything except victims of a fraud. What is their culpability except glowing in the false fame for a while?
False marking could not have happened at the direct instance of the students. Somebody else in each case would have found a middleman and an obliging evaluator to fix the marks, so they topped. The somebody could most likely be parents, unless, of course, the evaluators were themselves dunces and the wrong students, who ought to have failed, instead topped. Other subsequent stings showed the connivance of teachers and principals in what appears to be a widespread scandal.
Parents in that state are known to have helped their wards pass by passing material to them to copy. Teachers invigilating the examinations were either lax or conniving. All this implies manipulation of the system where rewards were sought without working for it honestly. All this is a fraud not only on them but the student community being long perpetrated. In this topper scandal, the smell of money emanates.
The Punjab Board allotted 27 grace marks to over a lakh of students to pull up the percentage of ‘pass’ from 39.5 to 72.25 in the Class X examination. A year earlier, the pass percentage jumped from 48.22 per cent to 65.21% in a similar way. An astounding route to improve the statistics, not the quality of students who passed out. Officially, mirages of successes were created. In the long run, these students suffer because they are poorly educated.
Bihar’s is a case of criminality, in Punjab’s a case of cleaning up the state’s statistics though it does water down the quality of the output. Apparently, none thought about the disservice being done to the students who would find it hard to cope in the next level of education, in this case, in the junior college. In short, who, apart from the children, are being fooled? This is a clear message: don’t you worry, beta, we will overcome your shortcomings and window-dress you.
The education system in the country stinks. The government does not know, except for the Kendriya Vidyalayas, to run good schools. Its interference is not supportive towards improvement of the means of delivering education but intrusive. No wonder, school after school in the private sector labels itself ‘International’ and come out of the purview of their respective state’s Boards. And these ‘international’ schools are also money spinners.
There is no common syllabus across the country, though compulsions of having language as the determinant of a state’s formation do exist. Even if this were ignored, there are revelations year after year where surveys have shown that in non-private (read expensive even to the middleclass) schools, students in the 7th cannot read what they were taught in the 3rd standard. Education, at least to half the population, is a term spent in a school.
A telling cartoon is doing the rounds on the social media where upon admission, parents are told that everything – from notebooks to uniforms – are to be bought only from the schools, obviously because there is a monetary gain there. When the parent asks, “And education?” the reply is “From tutorials outside”. The urban landscapes are dotted with those who provide such tuitions for a hefty price, helping the schools abdicate on their main responsibility.
These tutorials are not for the student who is weak in a subject and needs help but regular workshops where they spend hours so they compete with others to do better. It has come to a situation where only such students manage to get into Medicine or Engineering streams, or into the IITs, and those who are just weak in a subject are ignored by the schools themselves. They do poorly and get left behind.
The tutorials are a manifestation of the parental connivance for an industry to flourish – remember Kota? – and the schools, mere shells with a board at the gate. Never you mind what is done or more importantly, not done, inside. They are all victims of a system we wilfully perpetuate pretending to be promoting quality.
Mahesh Vijapurkar