CBSE paper leak: Why students need to stay angry and keep fighting
As someone who has been associated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) system of evaluation as a student and a teacher, I can vouch for the fact that both students and teachers place a great deal of significance on the outcome of the board exams. For students, they are a reflection (although not a wholly correct one) of their aptitude and decide which college they will be studying in.
For the teachers, it is the end of a year-long journey of imparting knowledge of the text, which the students memorise. I say this because while there are many teachers in the schools who adopt out-of-the-box and interactive teaching methods, they are all eventually bogged down by the examination and “textbook culture”, where correct answers to the questions asked in the board exams are invariably found in the textbooks prescribed either by the NCERT or the CISCE (for the ISC/ICSE board).
Students taking the board exams are thus more interested in “what is to be remembered” from the text, and teachers spend most of the year reinforcing concepts through practice tests and mock exams before the final exam in March. This leads us to believe that an exam that is accorded such a high degree of importance by students, teachers and parents ought to be conducted in the most efficient manner, in order to avoid glitches.
Thus, what happened last week, with the leak of the CBSE class 10 mathematics and class 12 economics papers, came as a shock to the three stakeholders listed above. Students, of course, had every reason to feel outraged, their final exams of the year interrupted and postponed for no fault of their own. The government’s response was to arrest the three people accused of leaking the papers in Delhi’s Bawana, order a re-test for the economics paper, and finally suspend one bureaucrat from the CBSE.
All of these actions point to an unwillingness to address the rot that is the broader secondary school education system of India. These administrative steps are mere stop-gaps and offer short term relief to students, while there are no checks in place to ensure such a fiasco does not take place again.
In short, these are not student-friendly steps. Almost criminally, the most important stakeholders have been left out of a long-term solution.
We must, therefore, understand where in the system the problem lies. For starters, it is the CBSE itself. While its initial mandate was to conduct and supervise examinations for classes 10 and 12, known popularly as the board exams, its list of responsibilities has been steadily increasing. This can be evidenced by the fact that it was tasked with conducting the national eligibility test, which is used to grant junior research fellowships and university professorships (clearing this exam is now a prerequisite).
So many examinations only increase the board’s burden, necessitating an increase in manpower and resulting in rising workload. As its name suggests, for the board of secondary education, its primary responsibility lies in conducting school exams. As of 2017, there were 19,316 schools in India, and 211 overseas, which were affiliated with the board, and depended on it to hold error-free examinations.
The CBSE is not a creation of an act of Parliament, as such it is not an autonomous institution. Finally, those who administer the board's functions are not educators, but civil servants appointed by governments.
For example, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the body that produces textbooks for CBSE schools, had renowned educationist Krishna Kumar as its chairperson in 2005. The new curriculum framework and revamped textbooks, particularly of the social sciences, were a welcome change for students and teachers as more contemporary and relevant history was added. Kumar is one of the most prolific scholars on the status of education in India, and thus the appointment of an educator to the highest rank in an educational body had its benefits.
Technological innovations have been suggested as remedies to solve the problem of leaks. However, technology is not foolproof, and does not address the wider problems in the board. Thus, the board needs to acquire autonomous status, and must be placed under the stewardship of educators, preferably at the school level.
This is because they are aware of the pressures associated with the board exam. They not only prepare students throughout the year for excelling at the papers, but also have to perform other roles as invigilators and examiners, which eats into their summer vacation. Moreover, the responsibility for the current leak must be taken by higher-ups in not just the CBSE, but also the ministry of human resources and development. Not just secretaries, but also the minister and minister of state must be held accountable in order to provide more accountability, and show students that their needs and priorities should be at the top of the government’s agenda, and that any violation will be dealt with severely.
Finally, students can learn something from this farcical development. It has exposed them to one of the many rots in India’s education system.
While universities are being crippled in various ways, and students agitate for spaces of dissent and equality, school students have seen first hand how the system has affected them. Their anger can only bode well for the future, because as aware citizens they now know how governments have neglected the education system. These young citizens can raise their voices for a better system for their juniors.
A word of caution for them: the problem is not just limited to India, but a part of the global concerns in secondary and higher education. It as prevalent in the “enlightened first world”, where many students will pursue their higher studies. Beware, a crisis is not far away just because it does not affect you in the present. It will creep up on you when you least expect it.
Stay angry, keep fighting.