Saturday, October 31, 2009

Uneducated Education Ministers


The simple way to improve education in the state/country is, putting all the education ministers in coma for 5 years, and repeat the same after every elections.

Recently, A.P. state government introduced relative grading system in 10th Class. Till now, in 10th class, if the percentage is more than 70%, it would be first class with distinction, if it is more than 60%, it would be first class, and so on. Now, the plan is to give relative grading for all the students. The top 12.5% of the students would get A1 grade, next 12.5% of the students would get A2 grade, and so on. They give till D2 grade. With this new scheme, if anybody gets 62% of marks (considering 2009 results), he/she would get C2 grade. Government never understood the effect on the students and parents due to these changes. For corporate schools, this may not make a difference, but, in all the small to medium size schools, this makes a lot of difference. Till now, if anyone gets more than 60%, they would be happy that they got first class. If they get more than 70%, they would be even more happy that, they got distinction. Now, if anybody gets 62% of marks, he/she would get C2 grade, which is 6th grade from top.

This does not look good for many. Parents would be unhappy and force their children to get better marks. Pressure increases for both parents as well as children. Not only that, this grading is relative grading. It depends on other students marks as well. If they know that, if they get 80%, they would minimum get this grading, then they try for that. But, if it is relative grading, and if they don't have any way of knowing, and if there is pressure from parents and teachers to score some minimum grade, it would increase the pressure on the student significantly. Government thinks this increases competition. They do not have minimum common sense that, these will not make sense, when million students are attending for the exam. If Million students are writing the exam, and if they start grading like top 12.5% etc., it will only increase the pressure.

Another absolute contradicting thing that government is doing is, it is trying to stop corporate schools from publishing their top marks. If corporate schools publishes the top marks in their school, government feels that, it creates unhealthy environment and increases the pressure on students as well as parents. This is contradictory to the above. But, they claim that they are improving the education where as they are destroying it.

1 comment:

  1. That system makes sense in higher education, in undergrad degrees. As someone said, India advances when politicians sleep

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