Central and State school boards have decided to discontinue the practice of raising board examination marks through moderation.
At the meeting with the Union Human Resource Development on Monday, they discussed concerns that spiking of marks by some boards was denying students across India a level playing field in admission to higher education courses.
“All boards including the CBSE, ICSE and State boards will do away with spiking of marks through moderation,” said a senior Central official, who attended the meeting. “There are cases where boards increase marks across the board for all students by as much as 10-15% . Students were getting marks as high as 99% in some States.”
However, in the CBSE, just 0.9% students could cross the 95% mark last year, as per officials.
The official, however, cautioned that students and parents may now have to be prepared for a scenario where astronomical percentages — which were becoming common in the last several years — could be a thing of the past.
A matter of chance
Delhi University cut-offs have also in the past few years increased to levels where admission to reputable colleges becomes a matter of chance. Many believe that with different boards adopting different criteria for marking and moderation, there was no level playing field, with students from some States occupying more seats in key colleges like Sri Ram College of Commerce, where the first cut-off hovers around 98%.
The decision will, however, no longer affect admissions to the IITs, as the government has decided to do away with Class 12 marks’ weightage.
What will stay will be the minimum eligibility marks to join the premier engineering institutes.
However, sources said the boards could continue the practice of awarding grace marks. But these would have to be mentioned on the marksheet and they would have to make public the criteria for awarding the same.
