When marks score over a Childs Life
Students Are Finding It Difficult To Handle Exam Pressure. Are There Any Lessons To Be Learnt? TOI Finds Out
Its not just board exams that get stress levels soaring in students. Entrance tests to professional courses that require extra coaching also have the same effect. St Josephs Convent, Patna, teacher Shweta Priyadarshini put it best when she said: Most students face two kinds of pressure: one due to the board examinations and the other due to competitive exams.
Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School, Chennai, Std XII student Athreya Mukundsubramanian said he would not have any time to relax after the board examination as he would have to prepare for a series of competitive exams, including the All-India Pre-Medical and Pre-Dental papers and the IIT-JEE. I wish I could just fast-forward the next two months, his mother, Gayathri, said. Why on earth cant the syllabus for entrance tests also be incorporated in the regular college syllabus so that students dont require additional coaching? Shetty asked.
It is the combination of entrance tests and board exams that some students are finding it difficult to handle. The examination system itself should be hanged! Thats the passionate cry from Amritsar lawyer B K Joshi. His relative, Amritsar Engineering College student Kanika Sharma died after consuming poison when she failed in mathematics. Students have often held their teachers solely responsible for suicide. I will come back as a ghost and harass my teacher, the suicide note left behind by a student from a prestigious Bangalore school said.
Some students have discovered other mechanisms to deal with the pressure, like running away from home or simply refusing to appear for exams. Two boys from a school in Ahmedabad walked out of their Std X board exams for fear of failure. Three students, in three separate incidents in Chandigarh, ran away from home for fear of exams.
(Inputs from Sanjay Sharma and Ramaninder K Bhatia in Chandigarh, Rumu Banerjee in Delhi, D Suresh Kumar and Pushpa Narayan in Chennai, Ashish Tripathi in Lucknow, Ambarish in Bangalore, Vasundhara Vyas in Ahmedabad, Jaideep Deogharia in Ranchi and Dipak Mishra in Patna, Saugata Roy in Kolkata)
Student-Friendly Measures That Have Been Ignored
While psychiatrists have been shouting themselves hoarse over the rot in the education system, educationists point at a slew of progressive, childfriendly measures proposed by national bodies that have often been ignored by schools and policy-makers alike.
Making board exams optional:
The National Curriculum Framework, for instance, suggested making board examinations optional, especially in schools that had junior colleges attached to them. The proposal has not been implemented. And though the CBSE has sent an advisory to all affiliated schools, asking them not to conduct any formal examination at the primary level, students are often stressed because of the graded tests in schools.
Changing assessment pattern:
The National Centre of Education Training and Research (NCERT) is working on changing the entire assessment pattern for primary schools. There has to be a change in the way children are assessed instead of simply testing them on answers to meaningless questions, Delhi University professor and NCERTs primary textbook committee chairperson Anita Rampal said. The NCERTs experiments with curriculum will
benefit central government and CBSE schools but many state boards continue to follow a rigid structure with little flexibility. School counsellor Upasana Saraf said the Maharashtra state board curricula for both primary and secondary schools was so lengthy that, in addition to children, teachers, too, were under tremendous strain to complete the portions. When teachers are highly stressed, how can they deal with pressurised kids? she asks. The Maharashtra board should follow a pattern similar to the ICSE, where schools could create their own curriculum till Std VIII, she felt.Positive Initiative
1. To reduce stress levels, some schools like La Martiniere Boys School in Kolkata have stopped mentioning the highest marks in report cards to avoid comparison .
2. Instead of a board examination, which causes panic among students, a continuous system of evaluation across classes IX and X is often touted as a better alternative.
3. The ICSE and CBSE boards already have a 20-mark internal assessment component and Maharashtras state board has introduced a 20-mark oral examination in languages and a component of internal assessment in mathematics this year. We believe this will help de-stress students as they will be judged on year-long projects and activities and not just on how much they have studied a few months before the board exam, Maharashtra education board chairperson V Sardesai said.
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Are parents to blame? Experts blame pushy parents for aggravating the stress caused by an alreadyfaulty system of education. Parents are highly ambitions and want their kids to excel in every field, Sri Ram Ashram Senior Secondary School principal Ripudaman Malhotra said. There have been several instances of parents haggling with coaching class-teachers over marks lost in mock tests.
Parents compare us with our friends whenever our scores are low. We are expected to perform excellently in board exams and are always reminded about their importance, which adds to the tension. The relentless pressure sometimes gets to you, said Subhrojyoti Basu, Std X student of Don Bosco, Kolkata.
But there are parents who would rather see their children happy, irrespective of exam scores. When my younger daughter fared poorly in Std X and came home in tears after getting her results, we just held her close and told her not to worry, Indira Ramakrishnan, a parent from Mumbai, said. Though she has often been chided by other parents for not pushing her daughter enough, Ramakrishnan has stuck to her guns.
With heightened media coverage on suicides by students, a number of parents like Ahmedabad-based Neelam Trivedi with a son in Std XII insist that their kids do not read newspapers or watch TV during exams. I do not want my son to think that ending his life is an option even in his wildest thoughts, Trivedi said.
The problem, however, is too huge for parents to tackle on their own. Some schools and colleges do take counselling seriously but, for the vast majority, mental health gets the lowest priority. Its not just municipal schools for lower-income groups that usually do without counsellors; costly, high-profile schools and colleges often do not have a full-fledged counselling centre for students. When it comes to grading colleges on their performance, psychologists feel that agencies like the National Assessment and Accreditation Council should also take into account its mental health facilities.