One of the comments to my previous post on the Education Policy being misdirected was that even though it impacts a miniscule part of the population, it at least does some good to some people. This falls under the traditional argument applied to a lot of our policy conundrums - Something is better than nothing.
Only in this case something is not really better than nothing. Let's investigate the reasons behind the decision to abolish CBSE class X exams. The decision purports to lower the stress faced by students in preparing for the exams.
But it forgets that the stress exists because a low score in Class X means not getting the Junior College or stream that the student wants. Since people wanting to change schools post X still have to take the Class X exam and nothing has been done to increase the availability of quality colleges.......how will the stress go away?
Classic case of taking symptomatic treatment without treating the underlying cause - it might have a placebo effect of garnering short term pubilicity and press induced fawning but in the long term nothing changes.
Unless we increase the quality of Junior College education and increase the availability of seats in 'in-demand' streams........Class X stress will remain - exams or no exams.
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