Grade 10 CBSE results posted as 'unhealthy' exam phased out

Thousands of Indian students across the country have received results from their grade 10 final examinations, which are used by schools to determine the "streams" that students will pursue for the remainder of their secondary education. The exams, which have been blamed for scores of student suicides across India, are to be phased out next year; instead schools will grade students on the basis of their classroom performance over the course of the entire year, though they will still be allowed to sit for exams if they wish.

The examinations, which are administered by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in India, were taken by more than 5,000 students in the UAE at 49 schools in March. A total of 886,338 students worldwide sat the exams this year - 522,107 boys and 364,231 girls. As was the case last year, girls outshined boys - 90.68 per cent of girls passed the exams, compared to 88.3 per cent of boys. For the first time this year, students were given grades in each subject instead of percentages. They were ranked on a nine-point scale from A1 (the top mark) to E2 (unsatisfactory) with a D being the minimum pass mark.

The move to do away with grade 10 exams was pushed through by Kapil Sibal, India's human resource development minister, last year. On a visit to Dubai this week, Mr Sibal said the old system encouraged "unhealthy" competition. Until now the grade 10 exam scores have been used by schools to determine which of the three CBSE "streams" students pursue for their final years in high school: science, commerce, or arts and humanities.

In the future, schools will have to employ other means to place students into the various streams, which has aroused some concern among parents and administrators, though many see it as a positive development. "I think every school will have their own system," said Veena Raghwa, the student counsellor at Abu Dhabi Indian School. "You could just base it on the performance of the child in 10th grade, or you could have an entrance examination."

Srivalsan Muruzan, the officiating principal at the main campus of Our Own English High School - Sharjah, believes the new system will reduce stress on students. "The pressure on students is less," he said. But doing away with examinations is unlikely to ease the pressure on students entirely, because competition for university admissions in India remains fierce and the race to get into university starts early in Indian high schools. Many students start preparatory private classes on evenings and weekends in grade 11 to get them ready for grade 12 board exams.

Admission to the country's top universities has become incredibly competitive: the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) had 320,000 applications in 2008 for 8,000 places, making admission more than twice as difficult as at the most selective American universities. Ms Raghwa said the new system has received mixed reactions from students and parents. "Everybody is sort of looking forward to it, because it gives a chance for every child to prove their abilities. Some people think it's a good system and some are not very happy with it. I think we need to give it some time to see how it works."

Ashwani Kumar, whose daughter Mythili Menon Pathiyil was one of 14 students at the Indian High School in Dubai to get a perfect score on the examinations, said in spite of the "tremendous pressure" board exams put on students, eliminating them was a bad idea. "Independent evaluation is required," he said. " The first board exam will be on the 12th standard," he said, suggesting that students would benefit from taking a grade 10 exam to prepare them for the important test in grade 12.

"Students I think are basically happy but then they also have doubts. If they are not giving a percentage, how are they going to decide who is going to get admission first into courses?" Ms Raghwa said. Admission to the coveted science stream, she added, can sometimes depend on minor differences of one or two per cent in exam scores. But Ms Raghwa herself supports the new system. "It seems good because it gives a chance to every child. Before it was just written exams, written exams, written exams. This gives you a chance to prove your abilities in other areas also and be assessed on that."

It was natural for people to have doubts, however, about a change of this magnitude. "The old system," she concluded, "was there for generations." [e-mail]