From 2014 academic year, it will not matter if you have studied in ICSE, CBSE, SSC or other state boards.
The board exam papers for class X and XII across education boards will have the same weightage of marks, bringing students on a level-playing field. With a common syllabus already in place and now a common paper pattern, the difficulty level will be similar across the boards.
The Council of Boards of School Education is working with various state and non-state boards to decide the parameters of the weightage of marks to be assigned to every question, said Sarjerao Jadhav, chairperson of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education.
For instance, the council will prescribe a range, like every question paper can have 20 to 30 marks of objectives and not more or less than that. “This will ensure that all boards give similar weightage to questions and have more or less similar paper pattern,” said Jadhav.
Some boards are usually considered inferior to others because they have more objective questions and less subjective questions or vice-versa. “The move will bring in uniformity across boards. We have accepted this idea but the weightage of marks has not yet been finalised,” he added.
School principals and students feel that the move will tremendously benefit SSC/HSC students and change the perception towards state board students.
Father Francis Swamy, principal of Holy Family School, said that the move would help state board students in cracking competitive exams. “Currently, the HSC students are unable to score in competitive exams since they are not used to the format and the difficulty level,” he said.
He added that such a solution was long overdue as even though the state board was producing a lot of students scoring over 90%, the quality of students was questionable.
“A student scoring above 90% in SSC was considered to be equivalent to a student scoring above 80% in ICSE. The general perception over the years has been that it is easy to score in SSC exam than in ICSE and CBSE exams. I am glad this perception will change once the scheme is implemented,” said Swamy.
Students feel that this move will create a fair competition in the job market. Kalpana Dikshit, a Malad resident studying in class XII in the state board, said: “The employers would be able to gauge potential of students coming from different backgrounds better as they will be on an equal ground.”
