Make board exams irrelevant

Context:  Delhi University announced the first list of admission into undergraduate programmes in its 90 colleges and the cutoffs reached the 100 % mark in some courses offered by a few colleges.

Challenges in Education leading to the phenomenon of High Cut-offs

• High Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER): 

• According to the All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE 2018-19), Delhi’s GER in Higher Education is 46.3 % while the national GER is only 26.3 %.

• Almost every second youth in Delhi between the age of 18 and 23 is enrolled in a higher education programme
• Moreover, India’s  aims to ensure 100 % enrolment across school stages under Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030 and the National Education Policy 2020 target

• Lack of adequate high-quality Higher Education Institutions (HEIs): leaving the cutoffs in the high 90s even for aspirants from socio-economically disadvantaged groups.

• It is predicted that an additional 35 million seats shall be created in HEIs across the country by 2035 to deal with the increasing GER.

• Rooted in parental mindset: In the last decade, when the CBSE experimented on a progressive reform by making Class X board exams optional, very few parents allowed their wards to take that option. 

Recommendation of National Education Policy 2020 for dealing with high cutoffs

• Introduction of a Higher education ecosystem that consists of large multi-disciplinary HEIs:

• Improve Accessibility: Degree-granting HEI will aim to have 3,000 or more students, thus will not only improve access but will also make HEIs viable with all resources in place.
• Allow for closing down of thousands of poor quality HEIs: which trap unsuspecting students, leading to a large number of non-entrepreneurial, unskilled and unemployable graduates. 

• Assessment reforms:  for both school-leaving and higher education entrance have to take place simultaneously.
• Get rid of the mechanism where school leaving marks are used as a cutoff in order to reduce the number of applicants.
• School leaving certificates to be based on an array of assessments across secondary level – Class IX to XII.

Conclusion: NEP 2020 envisages assessment reform at the school level, which would make the board exams redundant, and also a common entrance for the liberal arts-based higher education system.