The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), under the HRD Ministry, Government of India, was created, among other things, to provide an alternative scheme of studies to the State Boards and the CBSE. While regular schools offer CBSE and State Boards, there are no ‘regular’ schools that offer the NIOS syllabi. The NIOS is taken up by students who face learning disabilities and find the going tough in ‘regular’ schools. Under the NIOS, a textbook of around 300 pages and with 25 lessons has been prescribed which makes the job of scoring marks even more difficult. With no regular schools and trained teachers, the problem becomes even more acute for open school learners. The question paper offers only a negligible eight per cent for objective type questions, with the rest requiring descriptive answers. There is no choice and all questions are compulsory. Even University-level exams offer choices in their question papers.
P.H. Das,
Chennai
