Exclusive: CBSE plans Class 10, 12 Board exams on same date in two shifts

The plan to set common dates for both exams, with Class 12 in the morning and Class 10 in the afternoon, is likely to decrease the overall duration of the finals.

education Updated: Jul 17, 2017 08:50 IST

Neelam Pandey | Hindustan Times, New Delhi

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) proposes to hold the finals for classes 10 and 12 on same dates in two shifts, a move that will reduce the examination period and give teachers extra time to check answer-scripts more thoroughly.


The new plan was designed after the board met principals of some of the top schools in New Delhi and its satellite cities.

The CBSE, which has two panels committees to suggest ways to improve the system, will review the suggestions before a final decision is taken.

The country’s largest school board that has more than 18,000 institutions affiliated to it holds the two exams usually from March 1, barring exceptions such as this year’s state assembly elections that delayed the test by more than a week.

The exams run close to 45 days because of an array of subjects and separate time-tables for the two classes.
The plan to set common dates for both exams, with Class 12 in the morning and Class 10 in the afternoon, is likely to decrease the overall duration of the finals.

At present, exams are not held in the afternoon.
The reduced number of exam days will give evaluators — a pool of schoolteachers selected by the CBSE — more time to check the answer-scripts of students before the results are declared in May.
The teachers usually get a small window to check the answers, given the sheer size of the number of examinees.

More than a million students wrote the Class 12 exam this year.
“By conducting Class 12 and 10 exams on the same day we can reduce the examination period and provide more time to the evaluators,” a senior board official said.

The CBSE has drawn criticism for its evaluation system as several students complained of variation in marks after asking the board for a relook.

The board said it took extra care to cut faults, but the possibility of human error cannot be ruled out in calculating the marks, putting them on answer-scripts and feeding them manually in computers.
“Efforts are made to further improve the system,” the official said. The meeting with principals was called to gather views “before deciding anything on the evaluation and examination system”, the official said.
According to sources, most principals were against reevaluation or rechecking of answer-scripts, but won’t mind verification of marks.

“A longer evaluation period will be better for students. This will give teachers more time to look at the answer sheets, maybe more teachers can look at them. This will ensure fewer errors,” a principal said.
Another principal said “we have assured the board we will send our best teachers” to check answers.
It has also been suggested that the board should ask students to suggest teachers who could be good evaluators. Another suggestion is to increase the remuneration of evaluators, at least by 20%, and to set a figure as to how many copies they need to check.

“We are looking at restricting the number of copies that can be evaluated by a person in six hours so that quality is maintained,” the CBSE official said.

Source:  http://www.hindustantimes.com/education/cbse-plans-to-hold-class-10-12-exams-on-same-day-to-give-evaluators-more-time/story-GCTQLwOHaZUrTpAqgLAqFJ.html

Jul 03 2017 : The Times of India (NaviMumbai)

CHANGE IN MARKING FROM NEXT YEAR? - 

 

 State considers doing away with 20-mark orals in SSC

Mumbai: TIMES NEWS NETWORK





The state is considering changing the marking scheme for classes X and XII board exams from the next academic year. While a final decision hasn't been taken yet, one of the suggestions being considered is to do away with oral exams.

 

Currently , students appear for a 80-mark theory paper and 20 marks are awarded for either an oral or practical examination. However, there have been several instances where schools gave these marks leniently . To tackle this problem, the board reintroduced external examiners for practicals exams in March 2016 boards.

Recently , officials from the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, the state's education department and Maharashtra State Council of Education Research and Training met to discuss an alternative. “The issue was discussed, but the state is yet to finalize a new way to mark students. Many schools did not give marks judicially, and hence that hole needs to be plugged,“ said an official who attended the meeting.

The officials are working on a pattern on how the 100 marks should be distributed for each subject. Another
 official from the education de partment said, “A circular announcing a change is expected to be issued in the next three or four days. This will clear things up for schools and students.“

But teachers feel that doing away with oral exams is not the right solution.

“Oral examination tests skills such as oration, reading out loud and pronunciations. These are critical to the learning process and hence, oral exams need to stay ,“ Uday Nare, teacher at Hansraj Morarji Public School in Andheri. “But we do agree that a lot of schools are giving away the 20 marks without really testing students. The state could introduce external examiners for oral exams too,“ he added.





 
Source : http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31840&articlexml=CHANGE-IN-MARKING-FROM-NEXT-YEAR-State-considers-03072017003030#

Jul 02 2017 : The Times of India (NaviMumbai)

 

8 books on science Bill Gates wants you to read 

 

businessinsider.in 

 



The Microsoft founder has recommended several books over the years -some about the environment, some on the cosmos, and some on diseases. Here are his picks

 

The Vital Question by Nick Lane

Nick Lane might not be a household name, but Gates wants to change that.
The book seeks to resolve unanswered questions about how life formed on earth, and raises thoughtful questions about where solutions for disease may come from.
 “Even if the details of Nick's work turn out to be wrong,“ Gates said, “I suspect his focus on energy will be seen as an important contribution to our understanding of where we come from.“

Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open by Julian Allwood and Jonathan Cullen

On the heels of the 2015 Paris climate summit, Gates wrote on his blog that Sustainable Materials With B oth E y e s O p e n struck him because so few environmental books talk directly about “how we make stuff“. The book is a dense, diagram-filled read about the value in lengthening the shelf-life of everyday products by using materials that can be repurposed and reused.

House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox by William Foege

Foege is widely credited as the driving force behind the eradication of smallpox in the 1970s. In a 2014 blog post, Gates remarked on Foege's mentorship to both him and Melinda as they were getting their start in philanthropy.
Foege's 2012 book re counts how the eradication began, delves into his personal and professional life as an epidemiologist, and shares stories of people affected by the disease.

Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues by Paul Farmer 

One of the world's premier e pi d e m iolo g i s t s , P au l Farmer, helped bring sustainable health care to millions in Haiti. Though it came out more than 15 years ago, Infections and Inequalities has stuck with Gates because it reminds the public how much deadlier diseases like A I DS, T B, and ma laria can be to people with out access to vaccines or treatment.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari 

According to Harari, we weren't always the only species of human beings on Earth. Roughly 100,000 years ago, there were actu ally six varieties of people, but homo sapiens were the e it to today. He also looks to only ones who made it to today. He also looks toward a future in which genetic engineering and artificial intelligence make our definition of “human“ even mor e f lu id. F rom Gates: “I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who's interested in the history and future of our species.“

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah 

Malaria has become one of the Gates Foundation's top priorities over the past several years. Gates calls Shah's book “probably the best choice“ if you only have time to read one book on the subject.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

After a science-fiction dry spell of more than a decade, in 2016, Gates picked up Seveneves on a friend's recommendation, and he says he's grateful for it. “The plot gets going in the first sentence, when the moon blows up,“ he wrote.

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee 

Genome science can hardly be considered a topic of mainstream interest, but Gates says Mukherjee manages to captu re its relevance to people's daily lives. He seeks to answer big questions concerning our personalities and what makes us, us. Mukherjee is what Gates calls a “quadruple threat“. He's a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and author.

 

Source : http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31840&articlexml=8-books-on-science-Bill-Gates-wants-you-02072017016039#

A school without textbooks

We need to nurture skills, encourage children to engage with environment

Written by Anju Kawr Chazot | Published:June 30, 2017 12:24 am

Traditionally in ancient India, learning was imparted by the “guru” and mostly to children of higher castes. (Representational photo)

When in 1999 we started a school without prescribed textbooks, the reactions ranged from mild surprise and amusement to anxiety, even shock and indignation. A school without textbooks? How would children learn? Yet, after 18 years, our data shows that these children are faring as well, and in many cases even better, than their counterparts who studied in schools with prescribed textbooks. From kindergarten to Class 10, children at the Mahatma Gandhi International School (a PPP with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation) learnt through real life projects that they voted for or proposed and then prepared for their exams in grades 11 and 12.

Traditionally in ancient India, learning was imparted by the “guru” and mostly to children of higher castes. The guru’s position in Indian society was due to his spiritual and moral qualities as much as his knowledge of texts that were imparted in an oral tradition. Till the British rule, village schools ran under headmasters who decided on the curriculum based on the local context and resources. Though there was an erosion in the hallowed status from the guru to the headmaster, the latter continued to enjoy epistemic power and authority. However, colonial rule took away the independent status of the teacher by centralising education with stringent bureaucratic norms. This meant prescribed curriculum and textbooks with centralised examinations along with government control over teacher appointments, promotions, and school budgets. Poor pay scales and lack of autonomy further eroded the teacher’s professional status.

Furthermore, the teacher was no longer the sole provider of information. The textbook became the new source of information and the teacher derived his or her power in the manner of use of the textbook. This led to what Krishna Kumar, erstwhile director of the National Council for Education Research and Training calls the “textbook culture”. A curriculum and a prescribed textbook are always political playgrounds for competing ideologies. What goes into a textbook as well as what is kept out, is decided by a bunch of people sitting somewhere away (both geographically and metaphorically) from our children.

It takes a long time for new discoveries to make their way into textbooks. Sometimes, longer than 500 years. For example, the current map of the world we study in our textbooks is called the Mercator map and was made by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. A new projection called the Galls-Peter map made in 1974 shows how distorted the Mercator map is: Actually, Africa, South America and India are larger, Greenland and Antarctica diminished and Europe and North America much smaller. There is a debate about the “imperialist” bias and the “Eurocentric” vision that diminished the physical size of the colonised world. Now that we have the technology, should not the map have changed in the textbooks?

Educational researchers in India have long argued for a curriculum that takes the local context of the child into consideration. In one textbook for English as a second language, in an area where poor tribal children trek from forest areas and come mainly for the mid-day meal, often barefooted, I was shocked to see that the teacher was supposed to teach a Robert Frost poem as part of the secondary school course. No doubt some luminary had a romanticised idea of teaching English language through literature to a group of children who could not even respond to “what is your name” after two years of studying the language. Can we really blame the teacher in such a situation?

There is obviously the argument that all teachers may not have the wherewithal to create a curriculum. In that case, textbooks created by local stakeholders together with researchers and innovative educationalists can serve as a guide but not as a prescriptive truth. What should be developed and nurtured are skills and processes through a wider consultation of a variety of sources from books and internet to people. Instead, we have ritualised procedures in terms of definitions and formulae learnt by rote from textbooks and regurgitated in a onetime exam. Little wonder that a NASSCOM report states that only 15 per cent of the graduates in India are employable.

The National Curriculum Framework (NCF, 2005) and the Right to Education (2009) have brought welcome reforms in terms of active learning, connections with local contexts and real life and learner centric pedagogies. The NCF provides a framework for greater freedom for the teacher. But there continues to be a gap between the policy and its implementation.

With new technologies, the textbook cannot be the sole source of information. The internet has democratised knowledge making new skills of critical thinking and synthesis more relevant than just factual information. A curriculum based on concepts is more universal. As the psychologist Jerome Bruner argues, it is no longer problem solving but problem finding that is the key to a relevant education. This is possible when children are engaged in experiential learning through interaction with their environment. The nature of reality is complex and multi-layered. It cannot be be doled out in standardised formats. It can only be grasped and understood by one’s own processes and in relation to one’s own context.

Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-school-without-textbooks-children-colonial-rule-ancient-india-education-4728285/

CBSE to keep moderation policy if other boards do not concede

The CBSE has also set up the Inter Board Working Group (IWBG) panel asking Boards across the country to not inflate marks and give unusually high scores for the class 12 exams in 2018.

By: Express Web Desk | New Delhi | Published:June 30, 2017 1:13 pm

Taking into account the consensus among the state boards, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) raised its concerns over the scrapping of the marks moderation policy during a governing body meet on Friday. The Board said that it will not remove the policy if all other state boards do not concede to do the same.

“We are completely in favour of scrapping inflation of marks in order to maintain pass parity with previous years’ results,” said a senior CBSE official, adding that this may put student of the central Board at a disadvantage as compared to students of the state boards.


Earlier on April 24, CBSE and 32 Board had developed a consensus around the marks moderation policy but the Delhi High Court had prohibited the CBSE from removing the policy mid-evaluation. The Board had been planning to challenge the High Court order but refrained from the move to avoid delays for result declaration.

The CBSE has also set up the Inter Board Working Group (IWBG) panel asking Boards across the country to not inflate marks and give unusually high scores for the class 12 exams in 2018. CBSE chairperson Rakesh Chaturvedi heads the panel with members from Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Telangana, Gujarat, Manipur and ICSE boards.


Two more committees have been set up by the central Board to study the evaluation process and prevent loopholes which have caused faults in evaluation of the class 12 results.

Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/education/cbse-nic-in-will-not-scrap-moderation-policy-if-other-boards-dont-concede-4728947/

Jun 30 2017 : The Times of India (NaviMumbai)

CBSE class X students can now select vocational study as sixth subject

TIMES NEWS NETWORK





Class X students of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) can now opt for a vocational subject as the sixth subject under the remodelled assessment scheme of the board examination.

 

Under the revised scheme, if a student fails in any one of the three elective subjects (science, mathematics and social science), it will be replaced by the vocational subject. This was approved by the governing body on Thursday .

Post the restoration of the class X board exam and revision of the scheme of the exam, this is the first governing body meeting. The members also had a discussion on the moderation poli cy where CBSE chairperson R K Chaturvedi apprised the members about a committee being set up by the HRD ministry to work out the modalities, like common curriculum, examination and assessment schemes. But some of the members raised concern over whether all school education boards will come on board for a consensus.

The board, in March 2017, had discontinued the scheme of vocational subject as compulsory sixth subject under the national skill qualification framework and replaced it with a remodelled assessment scheme.

The governing body also approved the notification for restoration of the class X boards from the academic year 2017-18 and the first exam will be conducted in 2018.





 

Source : http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31840&articlexml=CBSE-class-X-students-can-now-select-vocational-30062017002022#

Dealing with stress





IT'S NOT DIFFICULT TO DEAL WITH THE PRESSURES OF LIFE IF YOU MANAGE YOUR TIME, WORK, EMOTIONS AND WEAKNESSES 

 

Transition from school to college brings a lot of changes in an individual's life. In the process of managing the changes, the students get stressed. Stress is nothing but your response to various stressors or the demands of life. 

 

MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS

Life now demands you to take charge completely in terms of day-to-day functioning i.e., from waking up in the morning, completing your assignments, eating meals, and until you sleep. It is also expected that you manage your finances as you will be getting a fixed amount of money in which you need to budget for your books, notes, hostel, food and recreation.

Another very important demand is managing your relationships and your emotions. There are chances of your getting hurt in the process of managing relations, you need to learn to deal with it positively.

At the college level, the teachers expect you to work in teams, with a group of people whom you don't know or you may not like. So, it is expected that you learn to work with them. This will help develop negotiation skills which will gradually prepare you for jobs in your later years, enabling team building capabilities in you.

HANDLING STRESS 

Abilities to manage time and work should be developed in such a way that you do not feel stressed and overburdened. Socialising in excess takes away a chunk of your significant time that can affect your studies drastically.This is when you experience stress. By the end of the course, it is expected that you achieve good academic performance.
Therefore, the reasons of stress in college may be summarised as:
Finances
Living away from your family
Home sickness
Feeling of isolation
Conflict in relationships
Academically high demands
Making new friends
Sharing a room
Unsure of life after graduation

SIGNS OF STRESS
 
Sadness
Anxiety
Insomnia
Fatigue
Sleeping for longer hours
Loss of appetite
Aches or pains headaches, backache
Digestive problems
Loss of interest in the activities you used to enjoy earlier
Loss of energy
Problems in concentration
Pessimistic behaviour

HOW TO REDUCE STRESS WHILE YOU ARE IN COLLEGE 

Attend classes even if it's not interesting

Try to meet the requirement of the course. Spend extra hours in studying

Get involved in extracurricular activities in college

Interact with your family regularly Don't be in hurry to solve the problems. Relax and think about the solutions.

Share problems with a person you think can help you (teacher, counsellor, neighbour or a professional). Do not dump your anxieties on your close friends

Take help from people if you are not able to solve your problems. Remember you are not a super human being

Organise your mind Keep yourself busy in activities that interest you
Exercise

Watch a comic movie or a video

Work on understanding the concepts rather than focusing on excelling or competing with others

Compete with yourself.

Know your potential and weaknesses and focus on these





By :Sujata Gupta Kedar tpb (The author is an educator)

Source :  Jun 26 2017 : The Times of India (NaviMumbai)

Smartphones distract us, even if they're off





If Mobiles Are Kept Within Reach They Drain The Brain, Find Researchers

The mere presence of a smartphone reduces cognitive capacity, adver sely affecting the brain's ability to hold and process data at any given time, according to a new study . Having a smartphone within reach, even if it's switched off or placed facedown, causes “brain drain“, say researchers from McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, US.

 

They also concluded that the more reliant people are on their smartphones, the more they seem to suffer from their presence. “Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention -as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones -the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity ,“ reads the report.

In the first experiment, 520 people were told to put their smartphones in `silent' mode and place them either facedown on their desk, in their pocket or bag, or in another room. They were then asked to complete tests “intended to measure available cognitive capacity“, including the Automated Operation Span task (a working memory capacity test) and a 10-item subset of Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (a non-verbal mea sure of fluid intelligence).

The researchers discovered that the participants who put their phones in another room “significantly outperformed“ those who had their phones on their desks, and “slightly outperformed“ those who stowed their phones away in a pocket or bag.

In the second experiment, 275 people were told to either put their smartphones in `silent' mode or switch them off completely , and place them either face-up on their desk, in their pocket or bag, or in another room. They also had to complete a selection of tasks, and were asked questions designed to assess how reliant they are on their smartphones.

The researchers found that the participants who said they were most dependant on their smartphones performed worse in the tests, but only if their handset was placed on their desk or in a pocket or bag. Whether a smartphone was on or off, or placed face-up or face-down on a desk, made no difference.

“The research identifies a potentially costly side effect of the integration of smartphones into daily life: smartphone-induced `brain drain',“ the researchers noted. They believe that “defined and protected“ periods of separation from smartphones -not unexpected periods of separation -“may allow consumers to perform better not just by reducing interruptions but also increasing available cognitive capacity“.

By : Aatif Sulleyman | THE INDEPENDENT

Source : Jun 28 2017 : The Times of India (NaviMumbai)

CBSE to revise moderation policy for 2018 Class 12 board exams

"Students have to work hard to earn marks. It isn't possible that every scores 100 out of 100 in all subjects. There should be some restrictions while awarding marks,"  HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar.

After a long debate, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is finally planning to do away with or moderation policy or grace marks from the next academic session.
As reported by Times Now, the board is preparing to do away with a clause in its marking system, moderation policy, which resulted in soaring marks in class 12 results.
Meanwhile, on April 25, CBSE scrapped the moderation policy under which grace marks are given to students in exams for difficult questions. In a reply to plea filed by parents and some students, the Delhi High Court also instructed the board to follow its 'moderation policy'.

More on the report:

• As per sources, the CBSE examination committee will also be meeting later in this week

• In the meeting, the board will consider revising their policy and removing the clause that board has adopted all these years

Here's what a senior board official said:

As reported by Time Now, a senior board official said they want to ensure true marks of students are reflected in the board examination and to maintain the pass party, marks of students are moderated.
This is unfair to those who work hard as moderation is not applicable if a student gets 95 marks or above, he added.

HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar view:

While commenting on the grace marks policy, the Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar on June 24 said that generous marks distribution of marks will soon stop. "I will stop bad practices in the field of education."
"Students have to work hard to earn marks. It isn't possible that everybody scores 100 out of 100 in all subjects. There should be some restrictions while awarding marks,"Javadekar added.

What is grace marks policy or moderation policy?

• It is a common practice adopted to "bring uniformity in the evaluation process"

• In simpler terms, marks scored by students are changed to align with the marking standards of different examiners

• Under the moderation policy, students are awarded up to 15 per cent extra marks in certain papers if the questions are deemed to be difficult

However, as said there would be a difference in the implementation of the policy as states like Maharashtra, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar do not have any such moderation policy.
On the other, it is seen that Goa, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu uses this policy to improve their overall pass percentage in the state.

Here's what students can expect:

Also, it is expected that there will be a single papers for all students across India, which earlier was followed in three sets of papers.
According to HT, sources have said that this will reduce the need to carry out moderation policy.
Further, the committee is set to meet on June 29 where this issue will be taken up.

By :IndiaToday.in | New Delhi, June 27, 2017 |

Source : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/cbse-class-12-board-results-moderation-policy/1/988133.html