CBSE scraps 'grace marks' policy to check high cut-offs in colleges

Aiming to check high cut-offs in colleges, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has scrapped the moderation policy under which grace marks are given to the students in exams for difficult questions.

The decision was taken at the Board's high-level meeting.

Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar, who presided over the meeting, said that proper marks should be given based on credit and added that schools should not work on giving the highest marks but the correct marks.

"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.

"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.

All the Education Secretaries were also present in the meeting.

The move comes after the CBSE had in December last year requested the HRD Ministry to help develop a consensus among all state boards on completely removing the policy which is considered as the reason behind inflated scores in board exam results.

Under the policy, the examinees are awarded up to 15 percent extra marks in certain papers if the questions are deemed to be difficult.

However, the practice 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.

If the states also decide to adopt the policy then the soaring cut-offs for admission to the colleges is likely to go down.