State board needs to build up its credibility

Errors and goof-ups are not new to the Maharashtra state education board, and this would certainly not be the first time that hundreds and thousands of students have been affected due to ‘minor’ errors on part of the board

Errors and goof-ups are not new to the Maharashtra state education board, and this would certainly not be the first time that hundreds and thousands of students have been affected due to ‘minor’ errors on part of the board.

One can count innumerable examples, starting from error-riddled textbooks, to faulty admission policies, silly mistakes in hall tickets and now, missing marks in results, all that have affected students as well as the parent community across cities.

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Here is a state, which boasts of being the first in the country to implement a landmark policy like the Right to Education (RTE) Act as well as its recent upgradation of curriculum, supposedly to give students a chance to be at par with their counterparts from other central and international boards. But, at what price? The very purpose of these changes is to reduce the levels of stress for students and ironically, it has only increased it.

We suggest that senior officials take out some time, and compare the status of the board today with that of less than a decade ago when computers were a luxury and students trusted strangers to feed in their marks appropriately; sending internal assessment marks from one place to another was a manual process; results were declared on time and the board office hardly received complaints of errors to present times, when technology is at their disposal and still, the list of errors just seems endless.

While the board has done away with the ritual of announcing toppers in order to cut down stress for students, have they really done justice to the children? Dejected and anxious looks on the faces of hundreds of students who flocked to the divisional board office on Tuesday proves the board wrong.

The question, once again, would be if the state board will learn from these mistakes, or use their experience to come up with more blunders. There is a need for credibility as well as responsibility, both of which seem missing from our state board at present.

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