India education board has outlined plans to introduce exams to class 5 and class 8 students. This move, they argue, is supposed to give teachers a way in which they can be able to access the student’s progress.
This has stirred a hornet’s nest and is facing criticism from all quarters. The educators and teachers are calling it retrograde. This is because it will burden the students and cause extra trauma to children who would otherwise have progressed swiftly without exams.
One argument being made is what happens to those who fail the exams. Will they be encouraged to continue with their education or will the exam result in more dropouts? Will the students be able to differentiate between a pass or fail? P B Prince Gajendrababu says that
There is no study that has proved that failure will enhance the quality of education. Instead, the exams will only have a negative impact.
Exams can determine viability
Board exams are one of the major proposals that were introduced in the New Education Policy (NEP) draft. However, the government is planning to move forward with some of its implementations as a way of testing if it will be viable. This policy requires students from Classes III, V and VIII to be tested and given results to asses their knowledge in any matter.
The Tamil Nadu Higher Secondary Post Graduate Teachers Association has, however, come in defense of the new policy arguing that many students in higher classes had problems in writing Tamil. They feel that if these students were tested at an earlier age, the mistake would have been caught and they would have learned from their mistake.
Clinical neuropsychologist B S Virudhagirinathan, however, refutes that claim and supports the educators. He adds that the exams will put them under immense pressure and they may end up being unable to perform reversing the gains that are already working.
