Board Exams: States agree to equivalence; no question paper ‘jumbling’ from next year, says PARAKH CEO

NEW DELHI: Most school boards across the country have told PARAKH, the independent assessment body under the National Council of Educational Research and Training, that they will be able to implement the guidelines for assessment equivalence by next year, said PARAKH CEO Indrani Bhaduri.

A key goal of PARAKH – full form, Performance, Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development – has been to bring all of India’s school examination boards and the question papers they set up to a uniform standard. To that end, the body will also analyse data from the PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan 2024, held on December 4.

India has close to 70 state and central school exam boards that conduct Class 10 and Class 12 board exams each year. An analysis of the boards’ functioning as well as their question paper, published in the June report, Establishing Equivalence Across Education Boards, revealed startling variations in approach and standards.

Following that, the centre held consultations and workshops with the boards.

That said, the reforms will be applied in the 2025-26 session and will not impact the board exams starting countrywide over February-March.

PARAKH and Classes 10, 12 board exams

At present, the boards vary widely in both performance and practice. The highlight of the report was that it provided them with the standards and norms, and guidelines for benchmarking their processes, explained Bhaduri.

The report revealed that the question papers set by the Board of School Education Haryana, Bhiwani (HBSE or BSEH) required the most “recall” of information and the ones set by the Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (UPMSP or UP board) demanded most “understanding”.

The report also analysed the difficulty levels of question papers set by the boards. The difficulty levels did not just vary by the board but also from subject to subject, within the same board.

“There are 69 recognised boards across India and in those 69 also there are divisions. We have the state school boards and some states have Class 10 and Class 12 separately. While there are others which have both. Then we have the technical board, the madrassa, the Sanskrit board and open boards. PARAKH conducted the research on the state school boards, CBSE and ISCE, the research included the majority of school boards, except the technical, madrassa and Sanskrit boards since they follow a different curriculum,” said Bhaduri.

PARAKH studied a total of 34 boards but before that, in 2023, it conducted a pilot survey with 10 to finalise the tools to be used for the survey.

Also read CBSE best, Kerala board worst in curriculum, infrastructure: NCERT PARAKH report

PARAKH: Board exam equivalence

For the survey, PARAKH employed two tools. One was for understanding the board’s functioning and processes. “The other was the question paper template analysis, which helped us understand the question papers the boards decide [on] – difficulty level, whether they are covering all cognitive domains, how the marking scheme is, and how options are arranged. All the nitty gritties were studied to get an insight into the functioning of the boards,” said Bhaduri.

PARAKH identified five parameters on which school exam board must have equivalence;

● Administration

● Infrastructure

● Curriculum

● Assessment

● Inclusiveness

“The report is not a comparison amongst the boards, that would be inappropriate,” clarified Bhaduri. “It is a comparison against the standards set. We disseminated the report with all the boards and all of them agreed to our proposal. Then we started working on one of the parameters that was of prime importance I.e. the assessment.”

Class 10, 12 question papers

PARAKH began working with the boards. From each of the 34, five paper setters were sent for training. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had the largest cohort with the board sending as many as 30.

“We are calling them master trainers. We want these master trainers to go forward in the states and train the cadres of paper setters, who will then be involved in preparing the question papers for the boards. We have also told the boards to prepare question banks,” added Bhaduri.

Highlighting the need for this intervention, she said, “What is happening at present is that someone with five-10 years of experience as a teacher is made a question paper setter. Question paper setting is a very technical thing. They need to have the understanding of the knowledge and procedures involved. But at present, the system is random. They take the five years of question papers, do a jumbling, and come out with the paper. That is what we pointed out. And it was the boards’ own paper setters who deconstructed their previous years’ papers to understand the gaps.”

In the workshops, the paper setters were told to analyse their question papers.

“They realised what they could do to improve. How from one blueprint, many papers could be developed. Then there will be an equivalence in the papers developed. As the training has been completed, the boards have said that the assessment equivalence could be done from next year itself, ” said Bhaduri.

The boards were also then told that each of them needs to work as a “State School Standard Setting Authority”.

“Bringing change in the assessment, which we are working on, is my dream project. I do not want to have numbers or statistics in assessment. I want to have more descriptors in assessment. Making assessment more meaningful and relevant, rather than putting reactive questions to the child, make it pro-active. Pro-active questioning is my dream,” she added.

Restructuring board exams: 40% weight to Class 12

Restructuring board exams: 40% weight to Class 12

Another important highlight of the PARAKH report was recommending that state and private examination boards across the country move toward an “on-demand exam” system and considering a student’s performance in Classes 9-11 for the final Class 12 report card.

“This will take time. The break-up suggested is an overhauling of the entire system. It is also an attitudinal shift. I don't want it to come radically. If it comes radically there will be opposition. I want it to seep into the system,” said Bhaduri.

Earlier, a report released by the Ministry of Education showed that more than 65 lakh students failed Class 10 and Class 12 board exams last year. Around 33.5 lakh students of Class 10 did not reach the next grade. While 5.5 lakh candidates did not appear, 28 lakh failed. Similarly, around 32.4 lakh Class 12 students did not complete the grade. While 5.2 lakh did not appear, 27.2 lakh failed.