Delhi: CBSE under fire

These are bad days for the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education — the country’s largest national school-leaving examinations board which has 18,688 affiliated schools in India and abroad — particularly for its ambitious, authoritarian former bureaucrat R.K. Chaturvedi who was hand-picked and appointed chairman of CBSE for a five-year term on July 14 last year.  Last December shortly after he was appointed chairman, CBSE issued two circulars amending its bye-laws to appoint a CBSE nominee (with veto powers) to the selection committees of affiliated schools which recruit headmasters and principals. Following a spate of writ petitions filed protesting dilution of the autonomy of affiliated schools and a cover story in EducationWorld (‘Brewing revolt against control-and-command CBSE’, February 2017), the circulars were put in cold storage.  More recently in Rakesh Kumar & Anr. Vs. Union of India & Ors. (CM No.19732/2017), the Delhi high court in an order dated May 23 pulled up the board for peremptorially scrapping its long-standing moderation policy under which students have traditionally been awarded ‘grace’ marks when question papers are unusually difficult.  And on June 21 while hearing an admission plea in Gaurav Kathuria vs. Central Board of Secondary Education and Anr. (W.P. (C) 5355/2017), the Delhi high court again censured the exam board for peremptorily abolishing its three-year-old re-evaluation policy under which class XII students were entitled to have their papers re-evaluated. Last October, the CBSE management scrapped its re-evaluation policy without notice to affiliated schools, forcing class XII students suspicious of their marks this year to obtain court orders for re-evaluation. “When there are so many errors in totalling, why should you do away with re-evaluation? You should not have done that. Careers of 2,100 students are at stake. We all know what happens on a fraction of a mark or percentage,” said a two-judge bench (Justices Sanjeev Sachdeva and A.K. Chawla) of the court alluding to the high percentages demanded by undergraduate colleges for admission of class XII school-leavers.  The court’s ire against the CBSE management was undoubtedly prompted by widespread reports of slapdash evaluation of answer papers in the all-important class XII school-leaving examinations and egregious marks totalling errors. According to media reports from across the country, students whose papers were re-evaluated under court orders revealed outrageous discrepancies and errors. The Indian Express, Delhi (June 19) unusually citing a Times of India report, recounts that Delhi-based student Sonali who had averaged 90 percent-plus in all subjects except mathematics (68 percent) was awarded 95 percent after re-evaluation. Likewise, Delhi-based student Samiksha Sharma’s maths marks were revised to 90 from 42. Ditto, the 50 percent awarded to Mumbai-based Mohammed Affan in mathematics revised to 90 percent after verification.  “CBSE is a school-leaving examinations board and its entire focus should be on conducting the class X and XII examinations, and addressing the grievances of students after results are released. However, currently CBSE is overburdened with responsibilities outside its remit and is conducting pre-medical entrance exams, entrance tests for architecture colleges etc — which should…