Board exam marks not to be spiked next year

A committee comprising seven school examination boards, including CBSE, said that spiking of scores of students in the board exams must be stopped across the country from 2018.

The committee, which met recently, has also recommended bringing in uniformity in the setting of question papers of all boards in subjects like Science and Mathematics. This is done to bring in uniformity in the evaluation of students' performance in the Class X and XII board examination, official sources said.

"The panel has recommended for stopping the practice of spiking marks, not the entire moderation policy," a source added.

The inter-board working group, set up by the human resource development ministry to look into the issue of the spiking of board marks, comprised the heads of the secondary school examination boards of Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Manipur and the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations as members.

The report of the committee, which also has suggestions for the CBSE to use only one set of question paper in the board examinations instead of the three already prepared till this year, is expected to be sent to the HRD ministry soon for scrutiny.

The meeting was presided over by R K Chaturvedi before he was removed from the post of CBSE chairman and shifted to the National Skill Development Agency on August 31. The appointments committee of the cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, replaced Chaturvedi with Gujarat-cadre IAS officer, Anita Karwal.

"These are all suggestions. The HRD ministry will decide the next course of action to persuade all the school examination boards to stop spiking students' scores from next year," a source said.

The committee had favoured most of the recommendations made by the school examination boards at a meeting called by the HRD ministry in April. This included a recommendation for framing a common curriculum in Science and Mathematics to bring parity in the evaluation of the papers.