Aimless rush for degrees and certificates

Schools, colleges, universities, parents, students, governments etc all are busy in strange manipulation and rush- to distribute certificates and degrees. This is also a well-known reality that almost 90% of these certificates and degrees holders never get anything from these certificates and degrees. Now, the HRD ministry and other educational experts should guide honestly to stop undue rush for the certificates and degrees in the country. They should face the truth, howsoever unattractive it may appear, which is uncommon in education system building rounds, but it is a very important and very necessary first stair in the reform of employment and livelihood goals.

Although such advice may disturb the current school and college goers, it is very correct to leave the mad chase of certificates and degrees analytically casing all levels of learning and chasing the large scale pressure and artificial collection of certificates and degrees without knowledge and skills by artificial methods in the exams, which boosts a pretence of attainment and success rate.

Now, it is a well-known fact that exams and evaluations are just a formality. Even, very poor students are high achievers in the exams and evaluations. These fake achievements give artificial pride to ignorant learners. There are examples that at many exam centres, not a single case of unfair means in exams is caught and reported for decades. This seems to be very unreal in a country where almost honesty is an endangered thing. Teachers and evaluators either help or ignore the cheaters.

Second, boards and universities inexplicably inflate the marks and arbitrarily inflate the percentage or grades. In some universities and boards, parents and students sit in 'dharna' (sit-ins) and all the students were prompted to appease them. Similarly, minority institutions are very liberal to their community students in granting marks. All this manipulation and inflation of marks and grades must be stopped to foster trust in the certificates and degrees. Now, certificates and degrees have lost all shin and relevance.

Examinations and evaluations are superb junctures to improve the quality of education in the country and filter away weak students from the campuses and make institutions and teachers accountable. The authorities must make it mandatory for every teacher to catch and report at least one case of cheating in the exam or evaluation each semester to get an annual salary increment and future promotions. This method will stop cheating in exams and evaluations. This will ensure the quality of the certificates and degrees. Parents can also be helped and counselled to shift their wards to some skill training or self-work if he is found lacking in studies. The boards and the universities can be commended for holding the decisive idea that sharing real worth will empower parents to understand the level of their ward.

Providing parents with information on the ward's standard is an important plank of education documents in most of the educationally higher nations. However, in India, this system is missing or inefficient. Here, institutions simply publish the annual marks/grades based on the fakery of exams and evaluation. In the absence of such institutional feedback about actual and honest student performance, parents have no idea to judge the standard of their ward based on gossip and physical but unreal report card which are inadequate and misleading indicators of student standards.

Sharing actual information with parents about the academic standard of their ward in the school/college introduces an element of reality about the ward, guiding the parents about future options.  Unless it is in the parents' knowledge how their ward is performing, they have many options to think about his learning-employment career.

The feedback by the teachers contains much valuable hidden information for the parents too, and it can be utilised to identify - low-performing students, their weaknesses, their interest, and pressures, for remedial initiatives for specific students. Examinations are not real indicators due to manipulations.

Many countries have very effective and useful parent-teacher meetings. With NEP, exam reforms are also very important and very necessary. But, this aspect has been ignored. Due to the non-seriousness of the teachers and authorities, almost 100% of students pass and exam results are no more real reflectors of the performance of any student. However, from the beginning of the 21st century onwards, the Indian government's education department's emphasis was to pass the students and not on quality education. 

The official initiative was not good for the nation and was not nationally welcomed and the government initiated a draconian No-Detention-System. But a couple of years later, the performance of the students fell drastically. Even though all were high achievers, they were not employable. Several studies indicate that reforms were responsible for growing cases of suicides, depression, stress, mental illness, dejection, hopelessness etc. Even the pass-outs of the best of the institutions like IITs, IIMs, AIIMSs, DU etc are still completely dependent on government jobs only. They have neither any skills nor courage to start any self-work. Educational institutes should produce leaders and not job beggars. 

The main resistance comes from teacher unions, who instigate the people and argue in the name of social justice that socio-economic backgrounds are responsible for poor performance. However, institutional rankings do not benefit the students. Academic rankings do not help the students in any manner. On so many parameters such as learner satisfaction levels, honesty in exams and evaluations, faculty appointments, promotions, salary levels, employability of the degrees and students etc there is total silence. 

The ranking published by some government institutions and magazines is compiled on the observation by a sample of principals, teachers, students and parents who have nothing to with the real and practical parameters like learner satisfaction levels, honesty in exams and evaluations, faculty appointments, promotions, salary levels, employability of the degrees and students etc. However, all the rankings ignore the perception-based 'academic reputation' scores and the actual and honest academic performance of students.   

Therefore education policymakers and exam and evaluation boards need to consider the actual performance of the students in external and internal exams to assist the parents and the employers to prepare them for open competition, control cheating in exams and evaluation and thus improve the level of students.