On October 6, school education secretary Anil Swarup wrote to the heads of all state education boards advising them to completely avoid “bunching of marks” and “their spiking.”

The Centre has recently asked all the state boards to stop the practice of inflating marks for class 12 board exam.

After the appeal was made, a total of 17 state boards have agreed to it.

On October 6, school education secretary Anil Swarup wrote to the heads of all state education boards advising them to completely avoid “bunching of marks” and “their spiking.” The inflation of results has led to unrealistic cut-off marks for admission to Delhi University in the past, as reported by Indian Express.

List of states that have replied to Centre’s appeal:

Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Telangana and Goa.

States that have not responded yet:

Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Odisha

Here’s what a senior official said:

“They have either clarified that they don’t resort to inflation or are willing to reconsider their moderation policy in light of our letter,” said a senior official.

In October, the HRD Ministry issued an advisory to states and the CBSE to stop the practice of spiking of marks in class 10 and 12 board exams from next year.

However, there has been no decision yet on the moderation policy and the practice is likely to continue.

The practice of awarding grace marks will continue for the students who need just a few marks to pass their exams, but this information has to be disclosed on the school and the state boards’ websites.

Advisory issued by School Education Secretary Anil Swarup:

“Bunching of marks and their spiking should be completely avoided. The practice of awarding grace marks should continue to pass their borderline cases (students who are failing by a few marks),” the advisory issued by School Education Secretary Anil Swarup said.

About moderation of marks:

Moderation of marks is a common practice adopted to “bring uniformity in the evaluation process”
In simpler terms, the marks scored by students are changed to align with the marking standards of different examiners
Under the moderation policy, students are awarded up to 15 per cent extra marks in certain papers if the questions are deemed to be difficult
Seeing the past trends, this practice has been blamed for inflation of results across school boards.