A Spectre Called Exams

Though it looks liberal, the new policy is counterproductive and not transformative. Education has to be understood ecologically in order for change to be truly meaningful

THE idea of examination reform is a strange, almost oxymoronic phenomena. Yet it is sociologically fascinating to study as it reveals a lot about what we think about knowledge and how we handle change. Consider the recent announcement that the new National Education Policy (NEP) promises that a candidate may take a board exam twice in a year. The news also proclaims that this is meant to eliminate exam stress for both students and parents, especially the “high stakes sense of pressure”. The reform also promises to remove the procrustean straitjacket around the choice of subjects, allowing students combinations of their choice. The emphasis seems to be on flexibility and variation— flexibility in terms of time and variation in the choice of subjects. The reform does not appear to be systematic but more an attempt to provide relief.

How does one look at such an announcement which affects a huge population? One realises that reforms are introduced nowadays in a blaze of publicity. It is like reworking a brand, where every minor change is read as history, touted as a transformation and quietly forgotten a fortnight later. In fact, most reforms are acts of clerical and technical tweaking, which policy presents as a miracle of change. This is true not for exams alone but for urban planning, agriculture and educational change. One could read it as a desperate attempt to offer relief or as a palliative or one has to locate this move within a philosophy of knowledge and change.