The Havoc ft. CBSE

As students of l0th grade, we can tell you firsthand what a roller coaster this year has been for us. We can assure you that if you're currently a school-going student, this will sound familiar - "Board classes are the most critical years of your life. You must study hard. You can't afford to lose even a single mark. Work hard or you will be left behind!" Sounds typical, doesn't it?

Now, we students of grades 10th and 12th (batch 2021-22) had to undergo the same rigmarole of studying hard and scoring great. But CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) didn't let us off the leash so easily. 

The roller coaster ride embarked when CBSE announced a change in the curriculum around July 2021. This was followed by a change in the pattern of exams and brought a whole new marking scheme into play. After being trained all these years to write extended answers, to justify our statements, we were suddenly expected to conform to an alien pattern - a pattern that too was referred to about a month and a half before our term 1 board exams - a complete antithesis of what was there before.

Instead of taking our board exams once (in which the total marks for each subject were 80), we are putting up with 2 terms (each subject carrying 40 marks). The first term was all MCQs (multiple-choice questions). And the pattern for the 2nd term still hasn't been elucidated.

Dealing with this sort of burden from our parents and teachers isn't an easy job. (And let's not forget how unforgiving Indian parents can be). A lot of us have expectations from ourselves too, making this a daunting process. Our pre-boards, much to our dismay, didn't go that well. The anxiety and uncertainty about the future didn't do us any good, obviously. We had no clue about how good, bad, or dreadful our boards would be.  

Here's a peek into the picture during our term 1 board exams -

After being drilled on how every step and formula matters and how step marking could make a variation to our scores, we had been acquainted with a new strategy for maths and physics - shortcuts and dodging answers. Now that every step and the presentation of the answers and outcomes didn't matter, it came down to trial and error and fiddling with the options to hit the bull's eye. 

The 10th and 12th grade English exam question papers were despicable. Let's not overlook how sexist and stereotypical the first unseen comprehension from the 10th-grade English question paper was. It definitely had a cynical impact on the ones who read it carefully and comprehended its essence. It's astonishing how the question paper got through the higher authorities!

To cover up their blunder, CBSE granted all students full marks for this controversial passage. Was this sufficient? 

Here's Avanti Nagral's take on the CBSE English exam question paper for Grade 10.

During the English exam, in a lot of the questions, more than one option seemed to be correct - which shouldn't have been the scenario. The answers to questions in a language exam can't be summed up in four options since everyone has their perspective. The new pattern hasn't allowed us to articulate ourselves, especially in language subjects. The fact that there were multiple grammatical errors in an exam question paper, where students are meant to not make any grammatical errors. 

For CBSE, the change in the curriculum, the pattern, and the marking scheme was all an experiment. But for us students taking boards this year, these exams change our fate for the coming years. These exams determine what colleges we study in, what professions we end up choosing. These exams dictate how we chart our future course of action. 

Here's a question that we want to pose to all the CBSE students who partook in boards this year (Batch 2021-22) - Was it fair on CBSE's part, the so-called "student-friendly board", to use us as their lab rats? What did we students have against CBSE to suffer through their trial and error period? 

P.S. This article has been published in The Tribune and we'd be thrilled if you could go visit it. Here's the link to the same.