Class 10 exam scrapped.. What lies ahead?

Well with all the big ticket reforms shaping up the Indian economy, the education sector was more or less ignored until last week. Last week the HRD ministry came with a brave plan to scrap the class 10 exam at national level. This was something which was discussed or I should say churned by the educational pundits. The decision was condemned, appraised, discarded, regarded the best and what not......

But finally the future is here. The decision has finally been made and the class 10 exams have been scrapped. The decision has been taken by ministry of HRD and there is no challenge to it. People who were part of the traditional educational system may find it hard to digest but the decision really stands out from the normal government jargaon and will benefit India in real terms.

The traditional system was very good when it was introduced. It provided the means to differentiate the talent and allow the students access to various fields of their interest. The system started gaining weight when the population of India started increasing. More and more people started competing and the competition became so called "cut-throat" at a point of time. The education system was now-a-days used to provide the access to very limited source of higher education. India has taken a big leap in providing the basic education. With the schemes like mid-day meals for students, employment guarantee for the parents of students etc, the government attracted large number of students and the states clocked literacy rates of around 60%.
The elite section of higher education however failed miserably to match the ever increasing need of educated population. The class 10 exam in a way became a filter to give admissions to only the best of the best. So every parent started forcing his child to learn / mug up and produce results. This pressure took its toll and suicides were reported from the student section. Every little child was bogged down by this pressure to score and get admission to the higher education courses.

This thing was fueled by the misconception that India has least number of higher education institutes which is good as its increasing the competition and allowing India compete with the developed nations like US, UK etc. I don't know when will the Indian government understand that those (US etc) who have the national level competitions of maths puzzle can't even thinking of competing with nations like India where every daily newspaper runs the maths puzzles just for entertainment. The need of the hour is to allow the real profit making institutes to make a foray into the field of higher education rather than allowing the current pseudo charitable ones to control the whole field. This will not only allow students to have varied set of opportunities but will also fetch the forex for India.

The ending of class 10 exam in a way symbolizes many things. It suggests the end of mugging up era and it also allows the real talented students to forecast their talent in various competitive exams where one has to understand and answer rather than mugging up. The new system suggests taking the comprehensive exams every 2 months. These will be objective kind of exams and will focus on talent of the student as one has to understand the concept so that he can mark the correct option.

The exam will take a lot of burden out of shoulders from young citizens of India and will allow them to pursue their hobbies. This will transform students into balanced and talented personnel. This will help in a nation building process rather than creating the army of bookworms who lack common-sense. Well the decision is to be appraised. Only daunting which remains is to allow the army of well talented an access to higher education which in turn will help the nation grow. The change has already begun. Its just a wait and watch phase to see if it bears fruits...........