CBSE scraps moderation policy

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) took a decision to scrap the moderation policy. This decision was taken as the practise of moderation policy was help responsible for inflation of results across school boards.

First, let us understand what moderation of marks is.

It is a common practice adopted to "bring uniformity in the evaluation process". Simply it means that students are awarded up to 15 per cent extra marks in certain papers if the questions are deemed to be difficult.

But from the past trends it was seen that this often resulted in irrationally higher cut off marks in college admission. 

Reason behind the move-

The CBSE had requested Ministry of Human Resource Development  to develop a consensus on completely removing the marks moderation policy so that the process of getting admissions gets easier

According to CBSE a unilateral scrapping of the policy would put its students at a disadvantage during undergraduate admissions. So it was important that all state boards agree to it.

As of now, 32 school boards have agreed to scrap the policy of "marks moderation" from this year.

The practise of giving grace marks will continue to ensure that a student clears an exam if he or she needs a few marks to do so. It has also been proposed that the school boards should score/grade a students' performance in extra-curricular activities separately from her academic performance