"It is very sad that a college has declared a 100 percent cut-off for applicants from a certain stream. I have heard that another college has declared a 99 percent cut-off. These cut-offs are irrational and exclusionary."
Kapil Sibal, Union HRD minister
"The National Curriculum Framework of NCERT in 2005 had suggested various reforms to contain this trend of inflating results. Board results are no longer indicative of a student’s real potential."
Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT and professor of education at Delhi University
"Currently, the admission process is based on just class XII performance. But students should actually be admitted on the basis of their class X, XI and XII marks, with each given a weightage of 20, 40 and 40 percent respectively."
Dinesh Singh, vice chancellor, Delhi University
"Boards today seem to be in competition with each other, and are marking students liberally. The boards have become student friendly. And while this is not entirely a bad thing, the rigour one associated with the assessment process, has all but gone."
Rita Wilson, former deputy secretary of CISCE
"All these students ought to win the Booker prize. How can anyone give someone full marks for an answer in the English paper? How can the examiner be sure that there is no better way to write the answer?"
Professor Yash Pal, former chairman of UGC
"We are working together on a common syllabus. From here, we would like to move on to a common design of question papers and a common assessment method for all educational boards."
Vineet Joshi, chairman, CBSE
"Thirty years back, someone scoring 80 percent would have been considered a genius. The negative aspect of our evaluation system is coming to the fore now. CBSE must immediately conduct a proper review of its evaluation system. If the board continues with these high scoring policies, other creative aspects in a student like painting and music will be lost forever."
J.S. Rajput, former director of NCERT
"The next step will be a cut-off of above 100 percent. I hope that by looking at this the government of India and particularly the HRD ministry will focus on creation of quality education infrastructure in India. Otherwise I don’t know how my kids will get college education."
Omar Abdullah, chief minister, Jammu & Kashmir
"It is like a syndrome. CBSE has too much of unit marking making it easy to score. This in turn affects cut-offs... It is a vicious cycle."
Meera Ramachandran, principal of Gargi College, Delhi and former advisor to CBSE
"I don’t think CBSE should be blamed. Its credibility has never been questioned. It’s not too bad if the quality of students is improving."
Jaswinder Singh, principal, Khalsa College, Delhi
(Compiled from The Times of India, Economic Times, India Today, Mail Today & The Hindu)