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Promoting students without exams to the next grade due to the COVID19 pandemic. Is it affecting the quality of learning?

Many public schools and Universities in India are promoting the students to next grade due to the COVID 19 pandemic situation. The ministry of education has given directives and permissions to promote students based on their previous performances or overall participation during the online classes.The public has also pressurised in many states to cancel tests as their neighbouring states have canceled their public exams in schools. Few states have fallen for this pressure and were forced to cancel their exam.

The pandemic situation has been very devastating and in few places has been very high due to the lack of precaution and carelessness. And conducting exams in this situation can cause spread and containment can get difficult owing to the fact that it is mostly going to be children below the age of 16. But does this policy actually help the students or could this become a curse to them?

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/covid-19-students-of-classes-10-12-want-board-exams-cancelled/article34270569.ece

In a country like India where the hiring is mostly dependent on the previous educational track record rather than the skill and knowledge of the student, this could become a huge problem for the individual to land up in a dream job or a company. This also gives less scope for a student to show his/ her improvement from last year as these students are going to be graded based on their previous educational record. The online classes have proved to be another challenge as it is hard to keep track of the students and hold their attention for a long time. As a student in School of Education as well as a teacher, I can speak from experience from both ends. The universities and schools are coming up with novel ides like seminars and virtual workshops to keep students engaged and facilitate continuous learning but the number of participants is very less compared to the offline classroom methodology. In this situation, the quality of learning is not as good as what is expected of the student. So based on this fact, one can argue that this could be an unfair way of grading a student based on previous academic record.

This has led to many learner getting lazy as they have a guarantee promotion and are not concentrating on learning. They try to be absent minded in classes and don’t participate in any activities conducted as many of the students just want to pass rather than learn. Cant blame just the students here as mostly the society looks into the grade of the learner than the skill. The cancellation of exams has somewhat made students lazy and careless towards learning. It has definitely led to a decrease in quality of learning. This especially in a developing country like India with a huge population of youth can be really big challenge in future.

https://www.ndtv.com/education/covid-19-exams-all-pass-list-of-states-promoting-students-in-junior-classes-again-rajasthan-odisha-tamil-nadu-chhattisgarh-schools

Here is my suggestions to improve this policy.

- Instead of promoting students based on previous academic year’s performance, conduct an online proctored exam.

- Consider more marks weightage form the internal marks and assignments into the final grade to keep track of continuous development of the student’s knowledge like it was considered last academic year of 2019-2020.

- Encourage exams like viva/oral exams or hands on projects wherever possible so that students are invested in proactive learning.

 

  • Leo Olitoquit
  • Zhanar Massaliyeva
  • Zhanar Massaliyeva
  • Zhanar Massaliyeva
  • Mark Johnstone