The problems with CBSE Class XII examinations

India's largest educational board, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is expected to release Class XII results (equivalent to GCE A-levels or the AP examination) later this week. Students' performance in this exam is critical for college admissions as well as getting government jobs.

Given how critical the examination is, however, it seems to be poorly designed.

Diving into the CBSE 2014 Class XII results data

I was curious about what the CBSE Class XII results looked like, and decided to snoop around the results website to see if there was any way I could scrape data. It turned out to be worryingly easy to do. A simple look at the source code of the page, and a few lines of python, were all it took to get the results (as well as personal information such as name and father's/mother's name) of all students who took the test. I selected ~17,000 out of the million students who took the test for my analysis. This analysis is only reflective of some regions (most likely in the north), and not of India as a whole.

People smarter than me have highlighted similar data before, but I tried to explore the problem from a different angle. Here is what I found.

Some subjects are much easier to score in than others

Amongst subjects that had atleast 300 students (out of the 17,000 samples), Music and Painting seemed to have the highest average score. Popular subjects like Informatics, Physical Education, and Computer Science also had reasonably high average scores.



On the other hand, Political Science, Economics, Mathematics, and Physics have the lowest average score. This disparity in scores is a cause for concern, as it puts students that take 'harder' subjects at a disadvantage when applying for jobs or universities.

At the same time, inequality in scores is another major cause for concern. This is especially stark for Mathematics, where an 80th percentile student scores 89 marks compared to a 20th percentile student who scores 33 marks.

Papers are not well designed, and "grace marks" are far too prevalent

Can you guess what the most common score in the English, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and Accountancy exams is?

Most people I asked thought it would be between 70/100 and 80/100. The actual answer? 95/100.

Yes, you read that right. A well designed test would ideally have an average score of between 70-80 marks range, and will have relatively few students below 50 and above 90. CBSE's tests, however, yield very different results.

Mathematics is an extreme example of this. Many students barely pass the subject. Yet, a very large number of them score 95 marks. A similar trend can be observed in English and Economics.

This can largely be attributed to the vast majority of questions being 'reasonably easy' for someone who knows the material well, and only a couple of questions differentiating the top students. This is a major problem for university admissions, where cutoffs have consistently reached ~97%.

It is also interesting to note that no one scored between 25 and 32 marks for the above 3 subjects. This trend is explained by the fact that 33 is the cutoff for passing marks, and that examiners are likely artificially inflating students' grades (where feasible) in order to make them pass.

A similar (albeit less extreme) scenario is observed for Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Accountancy.

Caste still matters

Concluding thoughts