In an interview to PTI, Pradhan also said the issue of ‘dummy schools’ cannot be ignored and the time has come to have a serious discussion about it.Several NEET and JEE aspirants enrol themselves in schools in their home states and move to Kota to attend coaching classes. They do not attend full-time schools and directly appear for the board exams.
The New Curriculum Framework (NCF), based on which the NCERT has initiated work on the new school syllabus and textbooks, announced by the education ministry in August, proposed twice a year board examination format so that students have enough time and opportunity to perform well, with an option to retain the best score. The National Education Policy 2020 also stated conducting the board exams at least twice a year.
Pradhan said: “The students will have an option of appearing for the exams twice a year just like engineering entrance exam JEE. They can choose the best score… but it will be completely optional, no compulsion.”The students often get stressed thinking they lost a year, their chance is gone or that they could have performed better… the stress caused by the fear of single opportunity will be reduced.”
“If any student feels that he is completely prepared and is satisfied with the score in one set of exams, he can choose not to appear for the next exams. Nothing will be mandatory,” he added.
Pradhan, who is also the skill development minister, said that he has received positive feedback from students on the matter.
Exams reforms has been attempted earlier through the continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) introduced by the CBSE in 2009 but was revoked in 2017. The board exams for classes X and XII were also split into two terms during the Covid-19 pandemic as a one-time measure in 2022, but the old format of year-end examination resumed this year.
“In a country where Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself counsels the students on how to remain stress-free during exams in his annual ‘Pariksha Pe Charcha’, such an examination reform is necessary. He tells students not to be scared of exams but to defeat them, ‘pariksha ki pariskha lo’ (take the exam’s exam),” said Pradhan.
On rising cases of student suicides in Rajasthan’s Kota this year, the minister said, “It is a very sensitive issue. No lives should be lost… they are our children. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that the students are stress-free.”
Asked why the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) hasn’t met in the last three years, Pradhan said: CABE is being reconstituted.”
On the decision of states like Karnataka and West Bengal to not implement the National Education Policy (NEP), Pradhan said, “Their objections are not academic but political.”
