“Changing an examination system which has made India globally competitive is a terrible mistake,” said Robert A Compton, a Harvard graduate and documentary film-maker.

He had directed “Two Million Minutes,” a documentary film showing how India and China are ahead of the US in terms of the tough school education system.

“I agree with what Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh reportedly said about not being in a hurry to scrap the examination system. It would be a serious mistake. Examinations help concentrate everyone's focus and energy on the intellectual and academic part of education. It does create pressure, but there have to be other ways to relieve stress than scrapping exams,” he said.

The film-maker has also co-founded Indian Math Online, a website which trains students in the US in mathematics based on the CBSE syllabus and vedic maths. “Testing is the best form of benchmarking. In the US there is no way to measure performance standards,” said Suresh N Murthy, co-founder Indian Maths Online.

Compton was in the city to launch his latest documentary Win in China, which highlights the thrust given to entrepreneurship by the Chinese government. It holds a warning for India and the US that communist China is turning into an entrepreneurial economy.
“In India like in the US, entrepreneurship is left to happenstance. In China they are teaching people to create jobs. They are investing heavily in entrepreneurshi.