– Bhuvana Anand is director of research at the Centre for Civil Society, Delhi. Tarini Sudhakar is a research fellow at CCS

For the first time in 58 years of its history, the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has scrapped its school-leaving classes X and XII national exams. Thousands of students from schools affiliated with this and several state boards are grappling with the challenge of limited exit certification options. The shutdown of all academic institutions countrywide because of the Covid-19 pandemic, provides an opportunity to re-examine the possibility of multiplying exit options, to think beyond traditional school examination board certificates and democratise certification.

Students who opt for traditional brick-and-mortar schooling in India usually write exams conducted by CBSE, Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), state boards or offshore examination boards such as International Baccalaureate and Cambridge International (UK). These boards provide ‘exit-certification’ to students, signalling their readiness for higher education and the jobs market.

However, traditional especially CBSE and CISCE certification, is not available for children who opt out of the conventional brick-and-mortar school system, e.g, homeschoolers or drop-outs. For instance, a teen who fails board examinations as a ‘regular candidate’ is eligible to write the CBSE examination as a private candidate. A regular candidate is “a student enrolled in a school, who has pursued a regular course of study in a school and seeks admission as such to the All India/Delhi Senior School Certificate/Secondary School Examination of the Board.” Private candidates are not permitted to write CISCE examinations. The only option they have is to write school-leaving exams of the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), state open school boards, or Cambridge International (UK). But these options provide limited, rather than clear, pathways to undergrad colleges.

In a society that celebrates CBSE and CISCE toppers, NIOS and open school board certificates don’t carry much weight with parents or employers. They are perceived as an option for children unable to cope with traditional school curriculums. This adversely affects the credibility of certificates awarded by NIOS and open school boards.

Indeed until 2015, the Pharmacy Council of India didn’t accept NIOS certification for admission into approved pharmacy study programmes provided by colleges and universities. Similarly in 2017, the Medical Council of India issued a notification disallowing students with NIOS and state open school certification to write the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) for admission into medical colleges. MCI cited lack of practical education in open schooling syllabuses as justification. Responding, the NIOS management argued that NIOS offers its courses through schools equipped with laboratories and its examinees are required to perform practicals. In 2018, the Delhi high court dismissed MCI’s disqualification order as unconstitutional and awarded parity to NIOS and open schools’ certification.

Cambridge International (UK) — now known as Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) — has run into problems with the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), a professional body that assesses the equivalence of certification awarded by foreign examination boards “to help people with foreign degrees pursue higher studies in Indian universities”. Although AIU recognises school-leaving certificates of Cambridge International, it does not recognise certification of students who have “completed their education through home studies/ private candidate”. This means homeschooled and private candidates who write Cambridge International’s A-level exam won’t be issued certificates of equivalence for admission into AIU member universities.

Likewise, although some state examination boards accommodate private candidates, they impose curricular restrictions on them. For instance, the Tamil Nadu State Board allows private candidates to write its examinations only in subjects that don’t involve practicals. The Maharashtra state board also allows private candidates, but requires them to have studied three languages. Such diktats disincentivise even gifted students to opt out of conventional schooling and choose their own curriculums.

The NEP draft of the Kasturirangan Committee recommended that examination boards should not have any regulatory role over affiliated schools and confine themselves to assessing and certifying school-leavers. This is a step in the right direction, but India needs a system that certifies learning and skills attainments of students without procedural qualifications with ‘private’ candidates and independent learners having equal unqualified access to higher education institutions. To begin with, NIOS needs to be reformed so that its assessment is not perceived as less rigorous than of other examination boards. Addressing these issues is necessary to attain the broader socially beneficial objective of democratisation of education.

Also read: NEP 2020: Disappointing philosophy