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The three blocks at the bottom of the education pyramid in a India are, students, teachers, and the schools. The government is at the top of the pyramid. Its job is to frame policies so that there is freedom of education to all its citizens. The system is broken in India because the government executive wants to get down and run the processes at much lower level in the pyramid.
At the bottom, the students should be free to study whatever they have genius for without peer or parental pressure or force-fed by coaching centers. The teachers should be free to teach their academic subjects and assess the outcomes with fairness. The schools should be free to set standards to their teachers and students so that they produce students who can compete in the national arena for higher education seats and job opportunities.
One persistent problem has been mark inflation by the teachers to satisfy the parents, students, and school authorities. That is, the teachers award marks generally between 90 and 99 out of 100 instead of the wide range from 0 to 100. This dilutes the standards of teaching, assessments, and grading. The main reason for common national competitive exams is the need for normalization and standardization of academic assessments and standard marks for academic seats and job placements. This can be tackled by the state and central Boards of Education by giving clear guidelines to the schools about assessments, grading normalization, and standardization of grades.
Suppose a class has 60 students. The teacher teaches the subject and conducts an assessment. That produces a set of 60 marks. These marks have a mean and a standard deviation. The Boards can give guidelines that the range of acceptable mean for each assessment should be near 50 and the standard deviation be around 10 for an exam with a maximum marks of 100. That means letter grades can be awarded from 50-10=40 marks. May be a mere ‘Pass’ can be awarded to those who cross 35 marks. From 40 to 49 marks the lowest letter grade, say C. From 50 to 59 marks the next letter grade, say B. For above average performance from 50+10=60 onward, the highest grade, say A. May be from 75 and above, distinction.
But getting the normal distribution with recommended mean and standard deviation is not easy. It needs careful and unbiased assessments by the teacher. These two metrics themselves will inform the teacher whether his teaching and assessments require further improvement. The teacher need not get feedback from the higher authorities. With a computer, it takes just ten seconds to calculate the mean and standard deviation of a set of thousands of marks.
Now, each school does not have one class but many for each standard. Say IX standard, may have ten sections with a mix of students. Once near normal distribution is achieved for each class, the letter grades awarded will also have normal distribution for all the classes. Ensuring that statistical distribution is the job of the school authorities. The Boards can ask these awarded letter grades to be uploaded in a portal for auditing by the Boards. The Boards may ask this system of assessments and grading be implemented from VI standard onward and uploading of the marks and grades in the Board’s portal from IX standard onward. That brings transparency in the assessments of each school from IX standard onward. Once this system is implemented marks can not be inflated and a fair system of assessments and grading will emerge with the support of mathematical logic.
Once this system is implemented, there is no need for national competitive exams for higher education admissions and jobs. The academic school record of the candidate from IX standard to XII standard is sufficient to find the suitable candidate because the record has been standardized and normalized throughout the country at the school level. The schools will also compete on the basis of quality, not inflated marks. The whole process for finding the suitability of the candidates is decided by the academic record of the student over a period of four years from IX standard to XII. This will prevent a single competitive exam deciding the fate of a student for a lifetime.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.