More and more Bengal board schools are considering shifting towards ICSE/CBSE. Last January ‘07 some friends and I made a visit to school and got to meet Father Tapan. He said that parents are pressing for a board change. Not just parents, the school authority too is disgusted with the mal-evaluation of papers in the state board exams Madhyamik and HS. Even some other schools are considering a board change.
I welcome this decision. Although after a slumber of 25 years, the WB board has finally updated the syllabus and made it at par with all India standard, still there is no transparency in evaluation of papers. take for example, i got 73 in English in madhyamik though i had scored the highest in pre-test with Rajat sir checking the paper. such things happen in WB only. many including me sniff a ploy in this - one that undermarks city schools and gives undue advantage to district schools. i have found that out of 2 students with same merit and similar ranks in JEE - the one from outside Kolkata has a score of about 950 while the one from kol has that around 900. and i have seen multiple examples like this. seriously, in this board it’s way easier to score if u r writing your paper from a small town. I am not saying that students from the districts are no match to us. That would be too naive. Merit is not area-specific.
There is this guy studying in my college in the same class. He is a scheduled caste and failed in all 3 papers in the first year - be that as it may for that is not the talking point. His command over English can at best be compared with the kind I had in class 4! I am not exaggerating. Yet he got 150+ in English in the HS whereas I got 130! The reason - he gave his exam from Jalpaiguri whereas me from Kolkata.
Now you may wonder why this? Actually this is a ploy by the ingenious brains of the CPM party think tank. There were days when the merit list was flooded by students from the city only and the districts and small towns lagged behind. For the last 8-9 years the tables were turned and we got to see that the merit list was swept by district schools. Thus the word was established that standard of education in the districts is at par with Calcutta. This is more due to administrative manipulation - it is an open secret that Kolkata students are undermarked than the district students under the direction of Alimuddin Street.