I wrote my last article under this header during the dreaded second wave of the Covid pandemic. Now, despite the possibility of it continuing as an endemic, life has resumed full swing on school campuses in Surat as across India. The CBSE final exams for classes ten and twelve have commenced in April 2022. But this article is about a serious and growing concern in academic circles of ‘dummy’ schooling, amidst talk of ‘bridging the learning gap caused by online schooling’. Let me show you the underside of learning gaps, bridge courses, dummy schools and the exams which are their raison d’être. Let us first look at the laudable yet problematic intention of bridging the learning gap caused by the epic two-year Covid lockdown in India.
Bridging The Learning Gap
It would be more accurate to say that a learning gap persists despite online schooling rather than due to it because the problem would have been more serious without online teaching during lockdown. Any temporary bridge course of short duration is likely to be intensive due to paucity of time. After two years of virtual schooling however, our students need time to readjust to the more taxing regimen on campus. A short-term bridge course may benefit some students but not learners who had a weak foundation in reading, writing and numerical skills even before Covid. Any attempt to bridge a learning gap at school therefore, needs to make allowances for individual ability and pace.
Students as well as teachers need sufficient time for regular practice, persistent effort and for consistent feedback and timely motivation to enable meaningful learning processes. Instead of frenetically attempting to close the learning gap within record time, schools should focus on an optimal learner- centric remedial programme. The desired learning outcomes may not be immediately visible but will be achieved better over a reasonable duration. DPS Tapi therefore, will devote this entire academic year to remedying learning gaps as well as to reinforcing new learning. Students diagnosed with remedial needs will attend regular and paced remedial sessions in language and numerical skills, with special attention to individual needs. They will also continue to attend classes in the other subjects and activities that constitute a balanced school timetable.
Perspectives of a learning gap can vary. Students are eager to engage with peers but feel overwhelmed at times by the immediate physical reality of school vis-à-vis their previous, more relaxed (and avoidable) experience of it as virtual reality. Teachers are focused on correcting errors and reinforcing learning. Both students and teachers thus close the gap through ongoing learning processes. But parents, especially in classes ten and twelve, tend only to measure the gap through their children’s examination results. Parallelly, behind competitive exams like the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical colleges and the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering colleges is a deliberately created knowledge gap between the class twelve syllabus and the NEET/JEE testing items in order to restrict the number of candidates who qualify. Candidates then, are forced to join private coaching to “bridge” this gap. Private coaching therefore, flourishes in India and especially in Surat, due to the desire for fast-track bridge courses with an eye to exam outcomes. Let us next examine the damage to holistic school education from the washback of such exam preparations.
Private tuition does twofold damage to lagging students of any class. Firstly, by providing instant solutions to set problems it blocks independent thinking, and secondly, it camouflages the actual gap with rote learning. Whole brain learning at school on the other hand, inculcates thinking processes covering the entire range of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (MI Theory) – Verbal Linguistic, Mathematical Logical, Visual Spatial, Musical Rhythmic, Physical Kinesthetic, Interpersonal and Intrapersonal. Parents are relieved by the relocation of school from home to campus in 2022, yet many remain unaware of its crucial formative impact, the variegated canvas of which cannot be measured solely by an exam mark sheet. Nor do high test scores alone guarantee a proactive and lifelong learner, a positive thinker, a team-player, an innovative problem-solver, or a responsible member of civic society. Prioritising ends (exam results) over means (learning processes) can thus prove detrimental to the student.
Exams versus Learning
Summative tests provide only one measure of academic learning. Indian society however, overrates high scores in board exams, overlooking the underlying learning processes. Even the CBSE, with nearly fifty prescriptive publications on diversified teaching and assessment procedures which are also reiterated in its Curriculum 2022-23, retains a pen-and-paper exam as the sole and final determiner of learning in classes ten and twelve. This final mark sheet of test scores is thus authorised by CBSE as the only official measure of learning at school, in direct contradiction of its own recommendations elsewhere. The washback of prioritising exam scores is visible as parents and schools in turn, focus on turning out high- scoring test-takers rather than on creating lifelong learners. The pressure to score high marks in board exams directly correlates with high stress levels of candidates, ironically necessitating a special CBSE counselling wing to deal with an essentially systemic problem. It is also highly probable that our Indian obsession with test scores is why our country does not yet rank high in innovation and research, with our youth preferring to play it safe rather than taking the risk of experimenting and exploring.
It is a proven fact that any intake of knowledge for exams is not necessarily retained in the long term. But no critical discourse is heard from the higher echelons of Indian education when CBSE uses pen-and- paper test items to measure attributes like innovation, moral values, logical reasoning and problem- solving, with the implication that high test scores are evidence of students’ readiness to apply these “twenty first century knowledge and skills” in real life. In her Times of India article published on 1 April 2022, the Union Education Secretary and ex-Chairperson of the CBSE praised the CBSE SAFAL (Structured Assessment for Analysing Learning) for ushering in a “new era of repurposing exams” by “building the ability to learn how to learn” in accord with the NEP (National Education Policy 2020). The article assumes that SAFAL successfully correlates learning processes with assessment outcomes in schools, citing 65 occurrences of the word “assessment” as against only 11 occurrences of “examination” in NEP as evidence of change in the “school ecosystem”. But the writer also clearly states the difference between summative examinations used to decide progress to the next higher grade of education and formative assessments used to measure the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Further, she also admits that summative assessments encourage rote learning and the coaching culture. The serious implications of overlooking the difference in purpose and outcome between formative and summative evaluations and of prioritising the latter, therefore cannot be glossed over merely by the use of correct terminology.
As a nation, we celebrate an annual Discussion on Examinations and the CBSE trains its teachers to implement a pattern of “scientifically designed formative and summative assessments” through its portals like Diksha, Nishtha, its Centres of Excellence and others. It remains a mystery then, why the summative pen-and-paper test is not replaced with a more diversified and comprehensive form of evaluation in classes ten and twelve, which would be relatively stress-free and fraud-proof. The National Curriculum Framework (NCF 2005) had put Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) into practice earlier but this was discontinued. Going by media publicity, the present NEP based CBSE evaluation is seen as the solution to all problems but the actual outcomes belie this. For instance, every year, CBSE awards hundred percent marks, popularly called ‘centum scores’ in all subjects to many elated candidates. Other education boards feel the pressure to similarly inflate their exam scores to level the competition for their candidates. Most colleges also tacitly justified CBSE exam scores by synchronously raising their own cut-off marks for admission. The introduction of CUET (Common University Entrance Test) in 2022 will hopefully, change this. Candidates scoring hundred percent marks in board exams is taken as a reliable and valid index of their actual knowledge and skills in Indian school education.Unsurprisingly, the NEET/JEE do not give any weightage to such farcical Board exam results. Students preparing for careers in medicine or engineering similarly relegate school education to second place, with the serious repercussion very visible in Surat (and India), of the proliferation of ‘dummy’ schools and students.
The ‘Dummy’ Threat to Learning
It is a growing concern that large numbers of students in Surat are leaving mainstream schools to enrol as ‘dummy’ candidates in some shady private schools affiliated to the CBSE as well as the Gujarat board. When good students enter the grey area of dummy schools then this acts as invidious peer pressure on others to follow suit, undermining holistic school education. The modus operandi of the ‘dummy’ school system is to enrol students who do not attend classes but are fraudulently provided with evidence of attendance to enable them to appear alongside regular candidates in the CBSE external exam in classes ten and twelve. The dummy students simultaneously enrol in private coaching institutes, paying exorbitant fees to prepare for the NEET/JEE in the time saved from attending school. This mutually profitable collaboration between dummy schools and coaching institutes has the added allure of increased admissions and the probability of good Board results. The CBSE has stringent rules on direct admissions in classes ten and twelve but the dummy system evades these checks by admitting students as early as classes seven or eight. The CBSE thus, annually provides an increasing number of dummy candidates with bona fide mark sheets and passing certificates, inadvertently endorsing a system which devalues high school education and equates medicine and engineering with lucrative income rather than integrity of effort. The unavailability of doctors and overall rural Indian healthcare crisis in the Covid pandemic could be one outcome of this mindset.
Post-Covid, the situation has deteriorated with the exodus of many more students to private coaching as the latter did not always obey lockdown rules and offered an alternative to online schooling. These institutes claim that they provide “bridge courses” enabling students to complete the senior secondary syllabus even before passing class ten, while simultaneously preparing for the NEET/JEE. The exam centric rationale of these coaching institutes segregates students on the basis of test scores without factoring in individual differences. Some students survive the punishing routine and pass as ‘toppers’ to become the poster faces of these coaching institutes. Less is known of many others who fail to clear the exams in addition to missing out on the balanced developmental learning of school. These teenagers in their crucial developmental years are deprived of stress free learning and of opportunities to cultivate critical and creative thinking, team building and sportsmanship, integrity, effective communication, an appreciation of fine arts and other values. The rising popularity of the dummy system also coincides with the Gujarat Education Ministry’s press release quoted in the TOI issue of 31 March 2022 that attendance in state board schools is not compulsory and best left to parental discretion. At the same time, the Ministry has also reneged on its earlier announced decision to implement in 2022 the NEP directive of a single school-leaving exam after class eleven. The CBSE has also announced the retention of board exams in both ten and twelve in 2023. Both, the retention of dual board exams and relaxation of attendance norms are favourable to the private coaching industry and indicative of their powerful lobby and reach into political corridors. It is no surprise then, that the malaise of dummy schooling proliferates unchecked, spreading its net to include entrance coaching for all competitive exams, including the CUET 2022 and even the Indian Administrative Services. Candidates for the IAS entrance exam are recruited as early as class five!
Reclaiming Education
Previous generations of professionals who never went the dummy way can best testify that school, far from hindering the discipline required to prepare for competitive exams, actually provides students with the correct attitude to face challenges and solve problems in real life. The twenty first century also offers a varied range of emergent career options without recourse to the dummy system. A long-term concern is that if the dummy system is permitted to flourish it will undermine real educational values, like teachers not taking private tuitions and being committed to the all-round development of students. In this bleak future, values associated with real education may vanish from our moral and social compass along with an already rare breed of dedicated and inspirational teachers. It is therefore high time that the most central of education boards should actually implement the multiple comprehensive forms of evaluation advocated by the NCF 2005 and NEP 2020, instead of retaining a single board exam mark sheet as the only measure of learning. The NTA (National Testing Agency) should also rethink the syllabus and purpose of competitive exams vis-à-vis the need to identify aptitude and talent in India’s rising population of youthful aspirants rather than ‘gate-keeping’ entry into elitist professional courses.
Diversified career counselling for parents and students should also begin as early as the primary classes when children still retain the courage to dream. Howard Gardner in Anatomy of Leadership: Leading Minds (2011) described the loss of valuable human resources due to the unequal importance given to different MI in our school curriculum. Human civilisation would be cast adrift without its artists, dancers, musicians, writers, sportspersons, philosophers, teachers and philanthropists. Our flawed Indian exam system has led to the commodifying of adolescents and even children as fodder for the coaching industry. In aapnu Surat, education in the true sense is overtaken by the expediency of ends over means in the spirit of entrepreneurship that the city is renowned for. Therefore, to counter this poignant victimisation of Surti youth, our smart city requires more than just technological knowhow. The need of the hour for us is enlightened parenting with longterm vision to support the all round development of smart students at school.
Dr. Sanjukta Sivakumar
Principal, DPS Tapi