Issues of Assessment in Board Examinations

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Education is a process as well as a product. Process includes attending lectures; participating in classroom activities; presentations and actively assimilating knowledge, skills and attitude; participating in co-curricular activities and learning how to interact and live with different people. The quality of the process is judged through examination as the product. The process is as important as the product, but our educational system is more products oriented and hence students as well as parents pay more attention to the assessment/examination rather than what happens in the school. Our examination system/ Boards at intermediate level seem ineffective to assess or judge the quality of the process of education due to some serious flaws.


Our typical examination papers follow a specific pattern of questions/concepts to asses year after year. So students do not bother about exams even if they start preparing for it a month earlier, still they can pass with flying colors. It also develops the problem of irregularities in colleges.

Still there are some students who even do not bother to prepare in the last days of exams because they have approaches and means to pass. Hence they are the most relaxed students.

The culture of solving five-years paper has also gives chance for students to rote learn concept for a 3-hour long assessment without bothering about its application in their everyday life. So they can write a strong rote-leant essay on “how can I contribute to the development of our nation”----- but lack the practical skill of actually doing so.

Professionally students are advised that cheating is not good, but on the first day in the exam centre students decide to cheat. It is the approach used in the exam centers which teaches the students to cheat.

The examiners and paper markers have their own compulsion as they have to earn their living. So they do not see what students have written or how well they have answered the questions, they are in hurry to check as many answer sheet as they can.

All these issues force one to think for an alternative system of board exams which can sincerely assess/judge the abilities of students and the quality of the process of education in schools/colleges without any injustice.

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