Educating CBSE

THE Central Board of Secondary Education CBSE has a motto that is suddenly invested with more than a touch of irony: Towards a caring and sharing world, it goes. We don8217;t know about the 8220;caring8221; part of it, but it appears some of its employees have been active in 8220;sharing8221; confidential test papers with the outside world for a handsome consideration. The recent arrest of a junior assistant working in the confidential branch of the CBSE demonstrates the porosity of a security system upon which depends the fate of innumerable hapless students. From all accounts, it was something of a cakewalk for this CBSE computer operator to access the questions of the CBSE Pre-Medical Test and strike deals with various dubious characters.

Last year, too, the CBSE Pre-Medical Test papers were leaked out, but there is a big difference between these two episodes. Last time, the test paper got leaked out at the storage stage, when the employee of a bank in the vault of which copies were stored, allegedly sold it. The involvement of a CBSE employee this time indicates that the 8220;black sheep8221; CBSE board chairperson Ashok Ganguly spoke about are not just at the 8220;printing, storage and transportation8221; stages of the operation, but right within the heart of the institution. In fact, there could be more CBSE employees involved in such transactions, given the enormous sums riding on test papers. The institution owes it to itself to order a thorough investigation into this sordid business, apart from the inquiry committee that is already probing the most recent test paper leak. The reason why the CBSE should take its recent failings seriously is obvious. It administers the 10th and 12th board examinations for thousands of schools all over India8212;this year an estimated nine lakh students took them 8212; apart from specific entrance tests. In today8217;s world, where examinations are often the sole entry points to the future, the authority administering them must be above suspicion in every way.

The CBSE has tried, over the years, to revise and upgrade its security systems. It is now mandatory for sealed question paper packets to be opened in the presence of four assistant supervisors; there are flying squads and observation teams to oversee examinations; its supervisors are put through regular training programmes, and so on. But any system is only as good as the people who administer it. Reforming it would mean building institutional firewalls between individuals handling sensitive functions and ensuring that access is necessarily limited. Ultimately, any attempt at genuine reform would have to take into account the big, bad and thriving world of the education mafia that is constantly honing its abilities to penetrate the walls of institutions such as the CBSE.