CBSE 12th result 2017: Why the 95% plus club is shrinking in Delhi

Delhi was in for a rude shock on Sunday, when they realised that none of the three toppers of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) 12 board exams were from the national capital. Moreover, even though the number of students who have scored over 90% and 95% has increased across India, it has dropped in Delhi since last year.

The number of students who scored above 90% grew up to 9,211 in India from 2016 to 2017. The same number in Delhi dropped from 10,324 to 9,406 .

Similarly, the ‘95% and above club’ also shrank in Delhi by 601 since last year, whereas it grew by 740 across the nation.

Stakeholders were left gobsmacked and were seen grappling for answers. One popular explanation given by some educationists is that Delhi attempts a different paper from the rest of the country. The principal of one of the more prestigious institutions said, “Though I can only make a conjecture here, but the one obvious reason seems to be that the question papers for Delhi are different. It may have been more difficult than the others.”

A moderation policy, which helps level the playing field by attributing extra marks for difficult questions, is supposed to have taken care of the problem. However, some have also expressed their doubts about this.

“The CBSE had decided to scrap the moderation policy. Then on the court’s orders they said they would continue using moderation and were still able to release the revised results in a matter of days. So it does beg the question if moderation really did take place or not,” said another principal of one of the well-known private schools in Delhi.

They also suspect that the moderation hasn’t been applied properly. Because if the Delhi papers had been more difficult than the other sets, then students in other centres would have obviously scored better.

Mathematics, Accountancy and Economics teachers from multiple schools have also come forward claiming that the average scores in their subjects have dropped since last year. “As per assessment of our results, we found that students have scored lower in Maths and Economics compared to previous years,” Manohar Lal, principal DPS Mathura Road.

Jyoti Arora, principal Mount Abu school, added that the situation was similar for accountancy. Teachers from Ahlcon school, ASN school, also corroborated the claims.

“I don’t think the moderation policy was implemented correctly,” claimed Rajeev Kumar Jha, a mathematics teacher at Ahlcon International School.

However, many insisted that it was still too early to decide what went wrong and where. “We are still analysing the data and trying to figure out exactly what went wrong. It can’t be moderation or the question paper. Because at the time of the exams and when the marking scheme was being finalised, the feedback we received was that there was no difference in the difficulty level,” said LV Sehgal, the principal of the Bal Bharati Public School.

No matter the reason, what remains to be seen is how this will impact undergraduate admissions at the Delhi University. With cutoffs not expected to drop, Delhi students may just lose out on this rat race.