The Supreme Court of India has directed the CBSE to respond to petitions alleging that the board failed to compute this year’s Class 12 board marks using the 30:30:40 formula as specified in its June judgement. Furthermore, the board has failed to effectively implement the dispute redress mechanism approach.
The petitions were heard by a bench consisting of Justices A M Khanwilkar and C T Ravikumar. The CBSE has till October 18 to submit its response, and the subject has been set for hearing on October 20.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSElawyer )’s stated that they were only served with a copy of the petitions two days ago and that he was unable to prepare a reply owing to a lack of time.
The evaluation scheme of the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and the CBSE was permitted by the Supreme Court on June 17 after pupils were unable to sit for the annual board exams due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Based on the outcomes of classes 10, 11, and 12, the Supreme Court developed the 30:30:40 formula for evaluating students’ grades. It further stated that the evaluation scheme should include a facility for dispute resolution in the event that students want the final result corrected.
However, in the petition, a Class 12 pass-out student claims that their marks were not calculated using the 30:30:40 algorithm. It claimed that the petitioners were given lower grades, causing them tremendous distress.
The petition claimed that the “CBSE offered a framework for dispute resolution on paper but failed to apply it in practise, causing severe prejudice to the petitioner students and causing irreparable loss to them if the matter is not addressed.”
They requested that their grades be calculated using the 30:30:40 formula and that their actual grades be taken into account.
The CBSE had previously told the Supreme Court that it would evaluate class 12 students for theory on the basis of 30% marks from the class 10 board, 30% from class 11, and 40% from marks earned in the unit, mid-term, and pre-board tests in class 12.
It had stated that marks achieved by class 12 students in practical and internal assessments on a real-time basis, as submitted by schools to the CBSE Portal, will be taken into account in determining final results.
The top court had referred to both boards’ assessment schemes on June 17 and said there was no “question of reversing the earlier decision regarding cancellation of examination” because students will not be prejudiced because they can still appear in the optional examination that will be completed in due course.
(With inputs from mint – News.)
The Chenab Times News Desk