CBSE to Remove Moderation Policy from 2018

Beginning this academic year, the Central Board of Secondary Education will be doing away with the moderation policy clause in its marking system. This clause was the cause of marks soaring in the last CBSE XII^th Board exams.

The CBSE examination committee is expected to meet this week to consider revising the moderation policy, and to discuss removing the clause that the Board has been using the past many years before declaring the final examination results.

It was revealed by a Senior Board Official that the CBSE wants to now ensure that the true marks of all students are mirrored in the Board exams. The moderation was carried out to maintain the pass parity, but this was unfair to students who had worked hard, as the moderation is not applicable if a student gets marks at and above 95%.

The committee is scheduled to meet on June 29 to discuss this issue.

The clause maintains that the Board can moderate scores of students to preserve the parity of the percentage of students passing the exams in the current year, versus those in previous years, both according to subject and in totality, as per a report published in The Hindustan Times.

Mr Prakash Javdekar, Union Human Resource Development Minister, on Saturday confirmed that distribution of marks generously should stop soon. He had affirmed that he would stop the education field employing such bad practices.

He stressed that marks have to be earned by the students, and that not everyone would be able to score a perfect 100 in all subjects, emphasising that there should be restrictions on marks awarded.

The moderation policy came into enforcement in 1992, and was applied for awarding extra marks to students through the different School Boards in the country. This policy began to be misused however, when several State Boards used it to raise the scores of their own students, causing resentment to dwell among others.

This abnormal raising of marks in CBSE exams resulted in reputed colleges such as the Delhi University raising their cut-offs for major subjects such as History and Mathematics.

Not all states implement the moderation policy; Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Bihar do not use the policy. Goa, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, use it rampantly to bring their pass percentage up.

The CBSE Board is also considering setting a single paper across the country for examinations. Currently, there are three sets of papers being set – one for Delhi, one for the rest of the country, and one for foreign countries.

HT has reported that sources reveal that this move will also do away with the need of a moderation policy. This is because the Board considers the mean performance of students in each set, and adds on marks as per the differences in the difficulty level of each set

The move by CBSE to do away with the Moderation Policy will only work if all the state boards agree to do so too, said a central board official. If not, it will place CBSE students at a disadvantage. Parity needs to be preserved amongst all the School Boards in the country.

This issue is with the High Court, and will be discussed by the governing body.