Matriculation results: ‘Arbitrary’ internal assessment marks worry parents

Beyond imagination high” scores and “arbitrary” marks given to students at the time of internal assessments are among issues raised by parents since the class X results were announced. In class X, the year-end board exam accounts for a maximum of 80 marks and a 20-mark component is based on internal assessments per subject.
Parent’s posts on social media and meetings with school principals have crossed the same anxiety. “This apprehension has become more pronounced this year. Only today, a parent come out to the admissions coordinator and said that students from some other schools were awarded full marks in internal assessment. Considering the process of internal assessment, the possibility of this is quite low,” said Jyoti Arora, principal, Mt Abu School, Rohini.
Vipul Aggarwal, an IPS officer , wrote to CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal, wondering why his daughter, in spite of getting high marks in the exam, had got poor marks in internal assessment. Then, having spoken to Karwal, he tweeted that he was pleased with the internal assessment process
Several school principals also said that more and more parents are coming out to them, surprising how their children missed out on the best possible percentage owing to the strict marking pattern
Ameeta Wattal, principal of Springdales School, Pusa Road, however, added that most schools are transparent in their assessment.
“The marks that we award to children show what they deserve. Some parents display a trust deficit. By the time the children get to class X, they have usually been in the same school for 12 years. In such a situation, the lack of trust from parents is something we can’t do anything about. We look at the marks children are getting these days and many of them are highly improbable,” she said.
CBSE officials mentioned parents raise these issues many times. “We do not make a data set of school-wise internal assessment, though the data is sent to us. These issues have been raised but for internal assessment, schools have to be given autonomy,” said an official. we