From the academic year 2018-19 the internal exams carrying 20 marks might be scrapped for the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams.
Currently, no concrete decision has been taken in this regard but the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary Education is playing with the idea seeing that schools award marks to the students unfairly and leniently. It has been observed by the board that schools give full marks to the students even if they are absent in the exam.
Currently, to judge the student's performance, board uses the 80:20 marking pattern. Internal assessments carry 20 marks are done at the school level and can be in the form oral or practical exam and combined marks of both exams determine the pass or failure status of the student.
“The department is planning to change the marking scheme, discussions have begun, it will be finalized in the next couple of days and we will issue a circular,” said one of the senior officials from the department.
Officials said that currently they are reviewing the various proposals submitted by the experts. Some proposals seek to eliminate the internal marking scheme entirely and other suggests that instead of marks grades are awarded.
“We met recently to discuss the proposals, but I cannot comment on it until the department announces it publicly,” said an official from the textbook bureau.
“We came across several cases in which students had barely secured minimum passing marks in the written paper, but surprisingly scored full marks in internal exams,” said Father Francis Swamy, former board member and joint-director of the Archdiocesan Board of Education, which runs 150-odd schools in Mumbai.
Schools heavily rely on the internal marks to make sure that all their students pass the board exams which help the schools in attaining the 100% result in the board exams. This malpractice has driven the pass percentages in subjects like English, Marathi, and Hindi to almost 100%. Earlier, only few students used to pass these exams.