CBSE makes this important change in its policy of giving marks to check high cut-offs in colleges

Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar presided over the meeting.

New Delhi: Aiming to check high cut-offs in colleges, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), at its high-level meeting, has scrapped the moderation policy under which grace marks are given to the students in exams for difficult questions. Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar presided over the meeting. He said that proper marks should be given based on credit. Schools should not work on giving the highest marks but the correct marks, minister addded. "It was decided that proper marks should be given on credit and schools should not work on giving highest marks but the right marks. Grace marks is a suggestion. It is a good consensus let us see how it works. Marks should be exact and fair marks should not be raised because there is competition," he said, reported ANI. "I will conduct a meeting of the concerned authorities. Parents complain that schools sell books at exaggerated prices by books recommended by the private books. We will review the NCERT books only then we will make it compulsory. Good and affordable books should be made available. There should not be any kind of loot," he added. In the meeting, all the Education Secretaries were also present. Interestingly, in December last year, CBSE had requested the HRD Ministry to help develop a consensus among all state boards on completely removing the policy which is considered as the main reason behind mounted scores in board exam results. The examinees, under the policy, are awarded up to 15 percent extra marks in certain papers if the questions are deemed to be difficult. The practice, however, of awarding grace marks will continue to ensure that a student clears an examination if he or she needs a few marks to do so. The soaring cut-offs for admission to the colleges are likely to go down, if the states also decide to adopt the policy.