LSE - Small Logo
LSE - Small Logo

Debarshi Roy

December 13th, 2021

Commodified Test Scores and the Role of Empathy in India’s School Education

2 comments | 3 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Debarshi Roy

December 13th, 2021

Commodified Test Scores and the Role of Empathy in India’s School Education

2 comments | 3 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

In this post, Debarshi Roy examines the unforgiving and remorseless High School examination system in India which perpetuates a system of high test scores, the glorification of the ‘successful’ over the ‘under-achievers’, and suggests alternative, positive ways forward to remedy the system to create a more inclusive and positive community of educated citizens.                                                              

 

If you happen to live in India, you will have, in all probability, come across newspaper advertisements extolling the performances of High School toppers after the announcement of public examination results, advertisements that are paid for by schools as a strategy to claim credit for the brilliant achievements of a few students while conveniently disowning the rest who are less marketable. This examination-oriented, competition-driven, unforgiving Indian school system often encourages maximisation of test scores as the singular objective of school education; the process begins early, often in kindergarten.

 

An overwhelmingly large section of Indian schools approach test scores as a commodity to be exchanged in lieu of life outcomes such as coveted college seats, admission to desired courses or even high-paying jobs in later life. A vast majority of Indians view education as the only path to upward socio-economic mobility, and while that notion is not fundamentally incorrect, the constrained definition of the word ‘education’ which often limits its description to some hastily obtained degrees and spoon-fed high examination scores has led to a critical crisis in the Indian school education system.

 

Commodification of examination scores has created an ecosystem that purports to help students maximise their scores with minimum effort. A dangerous consequence of this ‘market demand’ for collecting high scores emerged when school Examination Boards (the overarching bodies that conduct and certify High School examinations — like the Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE), the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), etc) were reported to be complicit in awarding high scores in order to remain the preferred Board for students, as Bhattacharji and Kingdon (2017) reported: ‘The Boards are competing to stay relevant by awarding increasingly high scores, thus diluting academic standards and pulling down the public’s trust in the assessment system.’ In sync with the objective of providing high examination scores to students, the examinations are designed for rote learning; a study by Burdett (2017) claimed that the examination papers of the CBSE in India

 

“are mostly aimed at testing recall and rote learning with very little evidence of any higher-order skills. The Grade 12 papers have no evidence of higher-order skills and the amount of direct recall is very high — indeed the Science papers are mostly direct recall. In the Mathematics paper, it could be argued that if learners are instructed using past papers then most of the questions classified as application could be recall.”

 

Commodification of test scores has thus resulted in rampant mediocrity within the Indian school education system where students are judged on their ability to memorise mechanically rather than their ability to think critically. Consequently, those who are able to memorise and perform well in a single test with limited time are considered smarter and more intelligent than the others. This renders the system of assessment hopelessly inadequate as Mayer (2002) explained: the fundamental academic goals of education should involve retention (memory and recall) of the subject matter as well as transfer which involves the application and use of the learnt matter in relevant situations.

 

However, the larger problem of the commodified education system lies in its psychopathic nature. In order to sustain the unthinking demand for test scores, a part of the education ecosystem in India leverages on creating the need for a set of artificial (and false) necessities: high scores, so-called ‘good’ colleges, professional courses, and such. The marketed needs are cloaked in a dangerous myth that humans have a limited time span to achieve success; this myth then speeds up the process of attaining success, serves to create panic, and in turn prevents logical and rational choices. False necessities are created and marketed by entities that stand to gain from the ensuing chaos: schools, colleges, private coaching centres, and even some ‘edu-tech’ companies. The winner-gets-it-all model has no space for the so-called ‘losers’, so the system is fast and efficient but ineffective and very unforgiving.

 

This system has no space for empathy which is most often regarded as a nuisance only meant to provide excuses for non-performance. Schools in India frequently shift the blame of non-performance onto the students while conveniently forgetting their own responsibility in such non-/under-performance of their own pupils. Moreover, in a socio-economically diverse country like India, each student comes to school with her own story of life and thus comparison of scores in ‘standardised’ tests is like comparing apples with cabbages. Standardised test scores can only be compared ceteris paribus (‘other things being equal’), a situation that is not possible to replicate in real life, least of all in India. Nevertheless, the extant education system effectively divides students into categories, thus creating a new social divide: the so-called ‘achievers’ who create value for the schools or coaching centres, and those who are non-performers and are treated as liabilities for the system. The achievers and their performance are marketed, and aspirational sentiments are invoked to create business models.

 

The results of this commodified marks-driven system have been catastrophic. Sarif (2021) reported that student suicides have increased steadily in India since 2016, and a student takes their own life every hour in India. A significant percentage of these suicides might be related to performance anxiety. Moreover, in another disturbing trend, the High School dropout rates have increased substantially in recent years; Krishna (2021) reported that ‘more than 33% students belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes drop out of state government schools in Class 10.’ The commodified system is obviously failing a strata of society that needs education desperately for their upliftment.

 

Conclusion

In order that school education in India transforms into a humane and student-focused system where effective learning can take place and every child is valued as an important member of the school community, the system needs to prioritise empathy. An empathic school system will help schools recognise the uniqueness of every student and understand problems and situations from the perspective of the student. Empathy will render the system more forgiving towards so-called ‘under-achievers’, and help to create a more inclusive society. Schools in India thus need to be assessed on the levels of empathy within their organisations rather than the test scores of a few high-achieving students.

 

The first step towards creating empathic school systems in the Indian context will require slowing down the system. This could be achieved by limiting the curricula and extending school years, providing children with the opportunity to take each examination multiple times, abolishing the system of school-level public examinations altogether, and introducing a set of specialised aptitude tests for college admissions. Parents and their children should be provided with a choice of home-schooling and open schooling where children can learn in their own space and without the need for adherence to arbitrary rules and regulations that schools very often impose. Schools in India enjoy an asymmetric psychological power balance which favours the school authorities; in order to create a functional and effective school system, this balance needs to shift towards children. Such a shift is possible when children are empowered with choices and are not gamed by a system that commodifies and markets their performances while pretending to help them.

 

The views presented here are those of the author and not of the ‘South Asia @ LSE’ blog, the LSE South Asia Centre, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.  

Banner image: Raj Rana, ‘A school for underprivileged children, Alibag, Maharashtra’, Unsplash.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

About the author

Debarshi Roy

Dr Debarshi Roy, FRSA is a behavioural scientist working as an independent researcher of organisational behaviour. His current research interests include complex adaptive behavioural systems, and the design of intelligent empathic behavioural intervention models for social systems. He is the author of 'Empathy-Driven School Systems: Nature, Concept and Evolution' (2021).

Posted In: India

2 Comments

Comments are closed.

Jaipur Palace

CONTRIBUTE

South Asia @ LSE welcomes contributions from LSE faculty, fellows, students, alumni and visitors to the school. Please write to southasia@lse.ac.uk with ideas for posts on south Asia-related topics.

Bad Behavior has blocked 6950 access attempts in the last 7 days.