The Central government's decision to give a “weightage” to marks obtained in Board examinations for admissions to IITs and prominent national technical institutes is a good initiative. However, there are concerns that some students will get an unfair advantage because of this move. This needs to be addressed.
There is no denying the fact that some state Boards award marks liberally, while it is not the case with the CBSE or the ICSE. There have been instances of some educational institutions awarding 100 per cent marks in internal exams and practical exams, even though the students' performance is far below the standards. Such students get a high percentage of marks thanks to the marks awarded by the institutions in internal examinations.
The government has come out with a new method to ensure that justice is done to all the students. It has proposed to introduce what is called “normalisation”. The process involves the normalisation of marks of all the students of the Boards through a scientific method. To my knowledge, the Indian Institute of Management — Calcutta has conducted a scientific study on how to normalise marks irrespective of the Boards to ensure that all students get a level-playing field in admissions to institutes of repute, including IITs. I hope that the proposed normalisation system will address the issue of unfair awarding of marks in internal examinations.
The consideration of marks secured in the Board exams will encourage students to concentrate on all the subjects taught at the 10+2 level. The tendency at present is a preference for competitive examinations rather than 10+2. Some students do not hesitate to appear for 10+2 Board exams as “private candidates” by skipping classes for the sake of preparing for IIT-JEE. This tendency will change now.
The policy of consideration for marks obtained in the Board exams has been proposed in order to shortlist 50,000 or 60,000 students on the basis the average of the Board exam and the main exam. The students will have to again take an advance exam to be selected to IITs. The idea is to make students less dependent on coaching and focus more on schooling at the 10+2 level.
Professor U.B. Desai is Director, IIT Hyderabad