You have near perfect vision, or 20/20 vision, if you can see the letters of an eye-chart from a 20 feet distance. 20/20 is an exciting cricket game if you can add two ounces of cricket with one ounce of baseball and garnish it with pom-poms. The year 2020, however, has been less than perfect or exciting. Thanks to Covid-19, it may very well be a year that we want to forget. Then again, it will be remembered as the year in which 100 percent of our students passed their Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exams.
A record total of 1.37 million students will get their grades calculated based on the secondary level public examinations: JSC and SSC. This is a momentous decision which is far from perfect, yet given the circumstances, this will go into history as one of the "abnormal" compromises that was "normalised" by the pandemic-infested 2020.
The Education Minister and her Deputy cited examples of other countries in support of their decision of not holding HSC examinations this year. Almost all countries of the world have either cancelled, postponed or modified their high-stakes examinations. The HSC is by definition a high-stakes examinations. It certifies students with the credentials to move from one level of education to the next (or workforce). While the decision to cancel the examinations six months after its scheduled start will somewhat unburden the parents and students from their current worries, it will trigger new ones. Before getting into the consequences, let me ponder on the decision making process.
UNESCO published a report in April indicating how 188 countries opted to close their academic institutions, affecting the learning of 91.3 percent of total enrolled students, numbered at a whopping 1.58 billion. Our academic institutions adopted a similar measure to secure the health safety of our students. In course of time, private institutions tried to adopt and adapt by espousing technology and switching to online teaching and learning; the public system faltered. The fear over fair assessment and the accessibility to technology are the main culprits for such a hindrance.
The same fear dictated the terms of holding the national-level public examinations. For a country where infrastructure is still at its infancy, holding on-site exams while maintaining utmost health safety rules was a no-brainer. Spreading the seating arrangement would have meant doubling the number of examination centers, and that too would not have necessarily stopped the parents crowding to the centres or examinees traveling in the public system. Even one casualty in the process would be too many. Ensuring technological accessibility to all candidates for online testing and training all teachers to administer a new form of tests would have required adequate training programmes and orientations, which we do not have.
0 Comments