"The school boards may continue with their moderation policy and grant marks for papers with "unusually difficult" or "ambiguous" questions and offer a level-playing field to all students in the evaluation process," the advisory issued by school education secretary Anil Swarup read.
“Bunching of marks and spiking should be completely avoided. The practice of awarding grace marks should continue to pass their borderline cases (students who are failing by a few marks)," it further stated.
Earlier, CBSE and 32 other boards, in a meeting on April 24 this year, had decided to do away with the spiking of marks or the moderation system as some state boards were seen increasing marks of their students, spiking their overall pass percentage.
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However, the Delhi High Court had asked the CBSE not to scrap the policy stating that it was not advisable to implement the change 'mid-way'.
Meanwhile, CBSE is likely to develop model sample question papers for all the boards to ensure uniformity in the papers of various boards. And the awarded grace marks will be mentioned in the mark sheets of students.
The sample question papers is expected to help states decide how many questions should be difficult, easy and what type of questions should be used. Depending on the state’s requirement they will use the sample questions to develop their own question papers. This is likely to bring in greater uniformity in the evaluation system.
The inter-board working group headed by the chairman of CBSE, RK Chaturvedi had made the recommendations in a meeting on August 28.
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Besides, CBSE will develop model sample question papers for all the boards to ensure uniformity in the papers of various boards. And the awarded grace marks will be mentioned in the mark sheets of students.
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The inter-board working group headed by the chairman of CBSE, RK Chaturvedi had made the recommendations in a meeting on August 28.
The recommendations of the group, formed to look into the issues related to the moderation policy, will now be sent to the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry for adoption by States across the country.
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“The sample question papers will help states decide how many questions should be difficult, easy and what type of questions should be used. Depending on the state’s requirement they will use the sample questions to develop their own question papers. This will bring in greater uniformity in the evaluation system,” the Hindustan Times quoted statement of one of the members of the group.
Moderation will help students get appropriate compensation in case there are differences in the question papers’ difficulty level and the overall evaluation process.
Meanwhile, the State boards will need to post their moderation policy on their respective websites in a transparent manner. Grace marks will be given to the students who narrowly miss the passing mark but the mark sheets will have no mention of the extra marks awarded to him.
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Note: The moderation policy allows different board to give students extra marks, especially to those who closely miss the passing mark; however, some boards used it to increase overall pass percentage of their students.