Notes from the diary of CBSE's 'lab rats'

Inayat Roy & Ruhani Khanna

As students of Class X, we can tell you firsthand what a roller coaster this year has been for us. If you're currently a school-going student, this will sound familiar — "Board classes are the most critical years of your life. You must study hard. You can't afford to lose even a single mark. Work hard or you will be left behind!" Sounds typical, doesn't it?

Now, we students of classes X and XII (batch 2021-22) had to undergo the same rigmarole of studying hard and scoring high. But the entral Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) didn't let us off the leash so easily. 

The roller coaster ride started when CBSE announced a change in the curriculum around July 2021. This was followed by a change in the pattern of exams and brought a whole new marking scheme into play. After being trained all these years to write extended answers, to justify our statements, we were suddenly expected to conform to a new pattern — a pattern that too was referred to about a month and a half before our Term 1 board exams — a complete U-turn from what was there before.

Instead of taking our board exams once (in which the total marks for each subject were 80), we were asked to appear for  two terms (each subject carrying 40 marks). The first term was all MCQs (multiple-choice questions). And the pattern for the 2nd term still hasn't been elucidated.

 Dealing with this sort of burden from our parents and teachers isn't an easy job. And let's not forget how unforgiving Indian parents can be. A lot of us have expectations from ourselves too, making this a daunting process. Our pre-boards, much to our dismay, didn't go that well. The anxiety and uncertainty about the future didn't do us any good, obviously. We had no clue about how good, bad, or dreadful our boards would be.  

Here's a peek into the picture during our term 1 board exams :

After being drilled on how every step and formula matters and how step marking could make a difference to our scores, we had been acquainted with a new strategy for maths and physics — shortcuts and dodging answers. Now that every step and the presentation of the answers and outcomes didn't matter, it came down to trial-and-error and fiddling with the options to get the correct answer. 

The Class X and XII English exam question papers were "hair-raising". Let's not overlook how sexist and stereotypical the first unseen comprehension from the Class X English question paper was. It definitely had a cynical impact on the ones who read it carefully and comprehended its essence. It's astonishing how the question paper got through the higher authorities! To cover up their blunder, CBSE granted all students full marks for this controversial passage. Was this sufficient? 

During the English exam, in a lot of the questions, more than one option seemed to be correct, which shouldn't have been the scenario. The answers to questions in a language exam can't be summed up in four options since everyone has their own perspective. The new pattern hasn't allowed us to articulate ourselves, especially in language papers. The fact that there were multiple grammatical errors in a question paper, where students are meant to not make any grammatical errors. 

For CBSE, the change in the curriculum, the pattern, and the marking scheme was all an experiment. But for us students taking boards this year, these exams might change our fate in the coming years. These exams determine which colleges we would study in and what professions we would end up choosing. In short, these exams dictate how our future would look like. 

Here's a question that we want to pose to all CBSE students who took board exams this year (Batch 2021-22) — Was it fair on CBSE's part, the so-called "student-friendly board", to use us as their lab rats? What did we students have against CBSE to suffer through their trial-and-error period? 

The writers are students of a Jalandhar-based school.

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