An obsession with numbers is a national characteristic. How many? How much? These are standard questions that follow any causal statement. This numbers’ obsession is not indicative of greed or monetary fixation, but is driven by the belief that a substantial amount means quality assurance.

The recent well-attended and excellently conducted meeting of IGCSE schools in New Delhi, which offer the Cambridge International Examination (CIE) board’s ‘O’ and ‘A’ level exams, also ended in a ‘how much’. The grades CIE offers to define a candidate’s performance in terms of A’s and B’s failed to impress many school and college principals. The rest of the world doesn’t have this myopic inability to accept the CIE grading system, but in India the question of ‘how much’ do A and B grades represent is invariably raised, because alphabetic gradations are not acceptable to evaluate scholastic acumen.

The annual declaration of results of the two pan-India school-leaving exam boards — CISCE and the CBSE — and of other state boards compel one to come to one of three conclusions: (i) Schools/ private tutors or parents have suddenly started producing a generation of geniuses; (ii) Papers are not set to requisite standards and/ or marking schemes are flawed; or (iii) 90 percent will become mandatory for entry into a college of repute. In short, 90 percent has been reduced from the status of ‘outstanding’ to a minimum qualification.

Tame mediocrity should not warrant or deserve esteem, but never before have eighty percenters been lumped into the ‘mediocre’ category. Separated sometimes by a mere three to four marks from their peers who have hit the magical 90 percent average, 80 percenters live in anxious anticipation of being sentenced to second or third rung colleges. The more fortunate, of course, resort to Dad’s cheque book. Never before has an 80 percent marksheet meant so little or cost so much.

The CISCE board has always been disparaged for generosity in awarding marks and it was often rumoured that colleges and schools deducted a certain percentage, to maintain a parity with other boards which are more conservative in their marking. It now seems the tables have turned and candidates writing the class X and XII exams of other boards are being awarded 100 percent even in subjects such as English, and scoring as high as 999.9 out of 1000 in whole exams. Now CISCE seems somewhat parsimonious by comparison.

It is obvious that students writing science or maths papers can score a perfect 100. These subjects demand ‘graded perfection’. But a 100 in English is an anomaly. Even a Nobel Laureate cannot claim a perfect essay.

Of course the question whether a single set of question papers can determine a child’s intelligence — and according to the great educationist Gardner there are eight intelligences — merits its own examination. Whether an answer paper written on a given day can fully determine a child’s grasp of a subject is equally questionable. The pattern of paper setting in some examination boards leaves a lot to be desired, and makes selective study an obvious option. Selective study will produce fine marks. But does a 90 percent necessarily indicate mastery of a subject or clever exam preparation?

For teachers, college admission boards and employers, the million dollar question is — How does one distinguish a ‘good’ student from the mediocre? How does the usually justifiably bad tempered selector, select? The hapless task of interviewing at times 1,000 applicants is indisputably daunting, no matter the amount of caffeine intake.

Against this backdrop of over-generous marking of board exam papers, an intelligent solution would be the formation of a panel of teachers who interview a candidate in the subject she wishes to pursue at the collegiate level. This would ascertain a candidate’s knowledge of the subject of her choice, whether she has genuine interest in it, and her aptitude. The process will prevent admission solely on the basis of marks obtained in class X or XII board exams.

Of course it’s not fair to presume that all candidates who score high percentages lack perseverance or natural intelligence. But it is also iniquitous to assume that all candidates with average to poor percentages deserve to be banished to an educational desert, a vacuum devoid of intellectual stimulus and cerebral nutrition.

It may be worthwhile to remember that Amartya Sen was admitted into Cambridge University because of a last minute vacancy, and that Albert Einstein passed in his second attempt at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Likewise Charles Dickens was a high school drop-out and Thomas Edison had no formal education. Walt Disney received his high school diploma at age 59 and Bill Gates, the world’s richest man dropped out of Harvard in his freshman year.

If we are to base our educational system only on percentages, all the formidable names mentioned above would be no more than scribbles on a reject register — forgotten names in stacks of dusty files, chewed up by silver fish.

(Robindra Subba is director of Himali Boarding School, Kurseong)