Bhubaneswar/New Delhi: Taking cognizance of the misuse of 'moderation' policy, the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry has issued an advisory to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and all states to stop spiking of marks in class 10 and 12 board exams from 2018.
"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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