CBSE class 10, class 12 exams will be held under a new system henceforth, says Anil Swaroop

Anil Swaroop, Secretary HRD, in an exclusive talk with Mehek Kasbekar of Zee Business, said the next CBSE exams will be held under a new system, which will be fool-proof. Further, he added, "The board is working towards including values and ethics in the existing education system. For that purpose, the new curriculum of NCERT may come up with an addition of value education in the formal education system." Here are the edited excerpts from the interview:

Q: Let's get right to the controversy, we have seen everything has settled and the board exams are going to take place on April 25th. The first question is why different decisions for class 10 and class 12 exams were taken? Why not the same consideration taken for the both, at least when the leaks were noticed in both the papers?

A: See, the implication of class 10 and class 12 examinations are different. Class 10 is more of an internal exam, where you self-evaluate. You don't have to go for admission elsewhere like in case of Class 12, where every mark matters. Therefore, the board decided to hold the class 12 exam again and avoided re-examination for class 10.

There are other reasons also for not holding the class 10 examinations. The primary reason was the impact of class 10 examination, we evaluated it through some randomly selected copies, which were corrected and we found that the results of this year was worse than the last year. Further, I would like to say that keeping in mind the inconvenience caused to 14 lakh children, we took the decision of not holding the exams.

Q: Prior to taking this decision, did the board hold any discussion on any other solution? Maybe like giving the passing marks to everybody.

A: Yes, we had a discussion on all these points, but once the random sample study came to us, we decided that it is not really required, and by and large, the marks will reflect what the students have done. So in that context, we decided that re-examination will be disastrous. While looking at other options, we found they were not as good. So we measured each of them and came to this conclusion of not holding the exams.

Q: Everybody was saying that the CBSE chairperson should be removed in the wake of the CBSE paper leaks. Off course, you explained in the public domain earlier about the decisions she took. But going ahead, how will you make sure that such leaks do not happen in the system at all.

A: This system has been working for three-four years but this is a wake-up call in the context that even this can be misused at some level. So, we are now committing ourselves to use technology to see how that can be used to make the system even more foolproof.

For this purpose, a committee under the chairmanship of ex-secretary of HRD has been constituted. It will submit its report by May 31, 2018. But, parallelly we are also looking at various techniques that can be used to make the system foolproof.

Q: And this will be applicable to when, sir?

A: Next exams. All exams from the next year will be held under the new system. (Smiling). It will be our endeavour to ensure that the students do not go through this agony from the next year.

Q: Offcourse, leaks can happen everywhere in a system, but its not necessarily that it is at the CBSE or top level, it also goes to school. Everybody has an access to it. One cannot ensure that each person adheres to ethical practices. How would you proceed to plug the holes other than technology in terms of teachers, etc? Is there anything else that the board will put in the system?

A: No. The advantage of the electronic system is that we are able to track down much easier than in the physical system. In the electronic system, whoever messes with this process, we can get to know who has got into the system at what time and from where through the IP address. Rather, we should get better prepared to look into the problem if it arises.

We hope that there would not be any problem and the culprits will be caught immediately in case they do it. But we can never give full assurance, but it will be our endeavour to make the system fool-proof.