Examinations test aptitude and help students make career choices. That is what they are supposed to do. In India, exams have become something else altogether. Every time the exams come around, a collective paranoia settles over India’s 30 million higher secondary students. Scholastic aptitude becomes a matter of life and death. When children begin to take their lives over exams then something is very seriously wrong. Stressed over the intense competition and high cut-off percentages, students a year as they prepare for the boards. Instead of being confident and creative young people, our teenagers believe that their entire futures depend on exam results.
The irony is that the reforms needed in education are not radical but commonplace. They revolve around the modernization of textbooks, broadening the ambit of what students are tested on and how they are taught. The tragedy though is that education is one of the most contentious and slowest-moving areas of governance. We pay for too heavy a price for government sloth through the precious lives of our children. This can’t go on.
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