The Hindu hosts an interaction on Standard X CBSE with students, teachers and parents
The grade system adopted by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in which students are given grades in place of marks and its new system of evaluation — the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) — has come for unanimous praise among teachers, students and parents.
This system, which scrapped the practice of declaring somebody as ‘fail,’ had contributed immensely in relieving the stress on all stakeholders, felt the participants at an interactive session on preparations for public examinations by Standard X CBSE students hosted by The Hindu here on Saturday.
With only grades being announced, students are no longer under any pressure to be the top rankers. A student said that 70 per cent of their marks were finalised even before they take the board examinations, reducing it to just another test.
The participants include H.G. Jeyaharish, principal, Coimbatore Public School and Thenmozhi S. Nazima, principal of Ideal Mount Litera Zee School; Meena Kumari, Chitra Geetha, and J. Subhadra (parents); Himani Srivastava, Hindi teacher, I. Shantha Kumari, science teacher, Edith Moleta, English teacher, P. Nimitha Pramod, social science teacher and J.S. Latha, mathematics teacher.
The teachers and students had come from Air Force School, The Camford International School, Yuva Bharathi Public School, National Model Secondary School, Suguna Rathinam International Public School, Suguna Padmalaya International Public School, Shree Saraswati Vidhyaah Mandheer School and SSVM World School.
A teacher said that with students and even some parents getting panicky in these final hours, the school was conducting motivational counselling.
Making a student comfortable with the subject was vital to make them excel. At this last minute, teachers should confine themselves to providing tips, said a teacher with three decades of experience.
Parents, one of them said, were pushing their children only to do their best rather than score the maximum due to the absence of rank system. The addiction of the children to gadgets was proving to be a major distraction. An issue of concern to many in the interaction was the difficulty students in Tamil Nadu faced in the Hindi language paper.
While the parents said that students with Tamil as mother tongue were finding it difficult to master the language, teachers said that it was the parents who were forcing their children to take Hindi. A Hindi teacher said that the present crop of students want to “learn the Hindi language in English.”
The main reason some students struggled in Standards IX and X was due to their lack of focus in Standards VI to VII where the basics are taught. Parents too must urge their children to learn the basics in these standards instead of suddenly putting pressure in Standard X.
Another major and common mistake among students was their failure to put the unit in their answers. This costs them quite a few marks, a teacher said.
Keywords: Central Board of Secondary Education, grade system
Tamil Nadu should first of all enforce the Tamil Learning Act of 2006 and make sure that Tamil is a compulsory language in CBSE schools. Imposition of the Hindi language (or other language) in CBSE schools as a "compulsory second or third language subject" must be banned. Hindi along with other languages like French, Sanskrit should be be optional instead of being force-fed as a compulsory subject which is really what is happening in CBSE schools. The Grading system will only ensure that native Hindi-speakers will have an unfair advantage without even learning the language of our state (which is really an international language)
When Maharashtra state can have Marathi language as the sole basis of continuation of a school license, how is that Tamil Nadu does not regulations for the Tamil language is such schools.
Tamil Nadu government should either give an ultimatum to the CBSE schools for implementing the Tamil Learning Act to have license and de-license schools which impose Hindi.
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