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this field. All that it can do is to try to pursuade the authorities concerned, and itself carry out research and promote or assist significant pilot projects.

A general discussion then followed. The points made by the Hon'ble Members who participated in the discussion, are given in the paragraphs that follow.

Shrimati Maha Bar Thakur.- There should be only oral examinations up to class IV and V. Easy type examinations should be introduced only thereafter. Internal examination is necessary and its marks should be added to those of the external examination.

Shri K. Anbazhagan.- There are advantages and disadvantages in external as well as internal examinations. The external examinations have vagaries and problems which are well-known and they can only evaluate. They also emphasize eleventh hour studies, hunt for likely questions and other unacademic trends. The, internal examinations maintain the sustained interest of students and can assist the organization of diagnostic and remedial programmes. But they often cause strained relations between teachers and students and not infrequently, political or communal considerations are injected into them. What is needed therefore is a balanced system that will involve both internal and external examinations in a suitable manner and stimulate the students to study throughout the year which is- the principal object of education.

Till about the age of 10, there should be no external examinations and even the internal assessment need not be rigorous. There is also need to reform question papers: they should not merely test the memory of the students; they should be so framed that a student will have to study the entire syllabus and not selected portions only; and they must be related to the age and maturity of students.

It is desirable that papers are given `numerical marks' rather than grades'.

Shri O. P. Tyagi.- Examinations are needed for two main reasons: to test the abilities Pr achievements of a student or for admission into Government service.

It is wrong to assume that every student can study every subject. In the present system, there is a heavy load of a large number of subjects on all students, irrespective of their interests and capacities. This is wrong Examinations should test the students in what they have studied and in subjects in which they are interested. There should be no compulsion to pass in each and every subject.

Internal assessment is very important and it is the teacher alone who can be the best judge of the capacities and achievements of the students.

There should be no external examination in lower classes.

Sardar Buta Singh.- There is often a great uncertainty about examinations because even a student who has worked hard may fail and another may get a first class by concentrating on a few selected questions which might luckily appear in the examination. Even the system of internal assessment is not free from difficulties and complaints of wrong favours by teachers are often received.

It would be desirable to introduce some element of competition. Two or three schools may be grouped together for purposes of examinations and the actual examination for them may be conducted by some outside institution. This method of evaluation, which is adopted in the Army, may be adopted in schools also.

It may be desirable to send papers in external examinations at the university stage to two examiners and then make a common assessment based on the evaluation of the two. This would be much fairer than the present system.

In the present system, the differences of schooling, atmosphere, etc. are not taken into account and the same question papers are set for urban as Well as rural students. This is inequitable.

A Progress chart should be maintained for every student.

Shri Chandrika Prasad.- The present system of examinations is unreliable because a student who works, hard throughout the year but does not run after important questions may fail; and a student who concentrates and does important questions only may pass. This weakness can be corrected by having a series of examinations throughout the year, the results of all of which should be taken into consideration in evaluating a students performance and Promoting him to the next class.

The students should have an option to appear only in those subjects in which they have failed. The written work given in the

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classroom as well as the home work given to students should be examined by teachers evaluation indicated therein. There should also be a system to evaluate the progress of student from time to time and communicate it to them and to the parents. In institutions of technical or medical education. the semester system of the American type has been introduced. Its results have to be evaluated.

Shri K. Damodaran.- The present examination system encourages cramming. Students do not read original books but learn answers by heart, either from the notes dictated by teachers or from guide books. The questions are almost the same and repeated, at certain intervals, from year to year. It is, therefore, necessary to reform the pattern of question papers. A paper on General Knowledge could be introduced in higher examinations with advantage. More time should be given to the study of extra curricular books and for a greater use of the library.

The Chairman is quite right in suggesting that experiments should be tried. It may be that some may go wrong but they can be changed.

Up to the third year of the primary school, there should be no examination. But beyond that stage, some examination is necessary.

There must be some attempt to introduce uniform curricula and system of examinations in the country.

Shri P. Anthony Reddi.- The present system of teaching at all stages is examination-oriented which restricts studies and encourages cramming. Education in the real sense, therefore, suffers. There is, therefore, need to empbasise extra-curricular programmes and to encourage habits of study and to promote love of learning.

There is hardly any co-relation between internal and external assessment. A student may get 80% marks in internal assessment and, may even fail in the external examination, while both systems of assessment are necessary, they have to be properly balanced and this can be done only if a pursuit of knowledge as such is encouraged and the emphasis on examination results is reduced.

The certificates given in public examinations should not contain any statement to the effect that the student has passed or failed. It should merely state his performance in different subjects and leave it to the employers or the authorities of higher institutions to make their own assessment and to decide whether he is or is not fit for employment or admission to higher courses.

There should be some public examination at the end of the primary stage. This will give a psychological satisfaction to those who do not proceed further to secondary or higher education.

Shri Valmiki Chaudhary.- The improvement of curriculum and the improvement of the quality of teachers is necessary for examination reform.

The performance of a student should be decided through a series of monthly examinations and not only through one examination at the end of the year. In the final examinations, students may even be allowed to use books.

The number of questions in examination papers should be small. The emphasis should be on the quality of answers.

It would be desireable to have a common curriculum in the country as a whole.

Examinations, except in medical and engineering, should be held in the mother-tongue or in the language of the State.

It is necessary to relate education to employment in order to be effective.

Shri R. N. Mirdha.- The problem of examination reform cannot be separated from that of the curriculum or the training of teachers.

The NCERT has done considerable work in examination reform. But similar programmes do not seem to have been developed at the university stage.

Internal assessment should play a much greater role in the evaluation of a student than at present. The teachers should assign marks in the internal assessment, convey them to the students and permit them also to argue about them.

The number of students appearing for examinations has increased by leaps and bounds. It is, therefore necessary to reform the system of question papers to suit the new conditions. Objective type of tests should be increasingly used and questions should be asked regarding general knowledge of students.

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The system of grading is good and should be adopted.

The present examination system is merely a test of memory. The evaluation of students must be broad-based and directed to the eva- luation of their entire personality, including his social behaviour, values and interests, adaptability and physical efficiency.

Shri Frank Anthony.- In spite of the difficult and complex problems involved, there is no alternative to examinations. We must, therefore, try to do the best we can to reduce their weaknesses.

In the system of ISC schools, the first public examination is taken at the end of Class X. In the earlier classes, the work of the students is evaluated by teachers who promote them to the higher classes.

Monthly tests do not find favour and, by and large. the schools adopt only two tests-mid-term and final. It had been suggested that the results of internal and external examinations should be combined. This is not done in the ISC schools which do not favour the proposal. It is also found that the schools compete in giving more and more marks in the internal assessment which creates a problem for the external examination.

The objective tests are good and are being adopted in the ISC schools.

The system of gradation was long in vogue and was found to be good. But the system of marks has been adopted again. In admissions to the Delhi University, there is a keen competition and even one mark does make a world of difference.

Shri Shiv Kumar Shastri.- In the old days, the teachers used to be competent. The students were well-motivated, well-behaved and respected the teachers. There were. therefore, no problems in examinations. Now the whole thing has changed. Mal-practices have increased and the life of invigilators is often in danger. These things cannot be changed unless some radical reforms are carried out, namely, unfit persons should not be appointed as teachers and students who have no proper aptitude or ability and character should not be admitted to higher education.

There should be monthly examinations which should be held, not by the teacher-incharge of the class, but by another teacher.

There should by a common curriculum in the country as a whole.

A student who has failed in an examination twice should, not be allowed to continue his education further.

The teacher's authority should be strengthened.

Shri Pitamber Das.- There is a talk of falling standards. But one has to remember that it is a common human weakness to consider that his generation was the best and that the succeeding generations are necessarily weaker.

In the present system of examinations, the student studies throughout the year, then he vomits what he has learnt in two or three hours, and the examiner marks it in two or three minutes. This is hardly a fair system. But if it is to be changed, the entire educational system will have to be changed.

There are some students who are of an intensive type, that is, they study very hard for a short time. On the other hand, there are students of the extensive type, that is, those who study for a short time every day but throughout the year. The examination system must accommodate both categories of students. Both internal and external examinations are needed. Each have their advantages and weaknesses. A method should be found to combine both these techniques in an appropriate manner.

Conclusion.- In winding up the discussion, the Chairman complimented the Members on the interest they had taken. the insight they had shown and the concrete and valuable suggestions they had put forward. He assured them that these would be of great use to the staff working on the problem of examination reform in the Ministry, NCERT or UGC. He also directed that a Committee consisting of Shri J. P. Naik, Shri T. R. Javaraman and Dr. S. V. C. Aiya would prepare a note on the suggestions put forward in the discussion so that they could become the basis of further work.

Supplementary note on item No. 29 of the Agenda-Problems of educated unemployed (i) Technical (ii) Non-Technical (iii) Physically handicapped

Tackling employment problem among the educated unemployed.- Unemployment among the educated persons has been showing a tendency to increased in the last few years. The Committee of Secretaries to the

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Government of India has discussed this problem. The discussions threw up several suggestions for solving the problem on shortrange as well as long range basis. The short range remedies suggested were:

(i) Employment opportunities for school teachers could be substantially increased if Government were to allow private or semi-private educational institutions to grow. These institutions/schools could also be allowed to charge reasonable tuition fees from students. In the rural sector many people would be willing to spend some money on the education of their children provided they were assured of a, better quality of education through fee-charging schools. In view of the constitutional directive, a gradual and careful approach will have to be adopted in this direction.

(ii) In some of the States, the Grant-in-aid code provisions prescribed that any school to be eligible for grant-in-aid from the State should charge only standard rate of fees permitted by the State Governments. In States such as Tamil Nadu, Mysore; etc., no tuition fee is charged in aided institutions. This means discouraging the establishment of aided schools by private agencies. On the other hand. this policy may encourage establishment of un-aided but recognised schools which charge exhorbitant fees which can be afforded only by the richer classes--thus increasing the class distinction between the rich and the poor. Hence the Central Advisory Board of Education may like to examine a via-media which may be adopted so that quality schools can be encouraged which can charge reasonable fees provided corresponding increase in quality is assured in the education being imparted in such schools. In fact, States like Mysore had experimented with an idea of allowing schools to charge betterment fees even though tuition fees had been abolished.

(iii) Another suggestion to relieve unemployment amongst the matriculates and graduates is to appoint more schools teachers by reducing the teacher pupil ratio from 1:45 which is not permitted to 1:30. This will not only relieve unemployment but also improve quality of education. This may also have indirect effect in reducing the students indiscipline as there Will be more contact between teachers and students which is not possible now due to large number of students under the supervision of a teacher.

The additional teachers to be appointed will require additional funds to be earmarked under the plan. The Planning Commission has been urging the States to provide increased allocations for elementary education. It has also been pointed out to the States that the amount set apart by the Planning Commission for elementary education is to be considered as earmarked funds and cannot be diverted. However, the actual money released by State Governments for elementary education may not approach the targets suggested by the Working Groups during their discussions. The C.A.B.E. may like to urge upon all the State Governments to ensure that the amounts earmarked for elementary education are not diverted. Long range remedies proposed are :

(i) A proposal has been made that gift tax/estate duty may be waived in the case of gifts of money or land made to educational institutions. The intention is that such concessions may. encourage provision of funds and donations of lands for educational purposes and thus provide increased employment. The C. A. B. E. may like to recommend that all such forms of taxes which hinder donations for educational purposes may be reviewed by State and Central Governments.

(ii) Much of the unemployment amongst the educated persons can be traced to the wrong choice of specialisations e.g. engineering and technology in the last few years. It is common knowledge that many persons go in for higher education merely because they have no specific advice regarding careers available in the country. The Education Commission has also recommended that career advice and educational counselling should start at the school stage. Further, such counselling at the university stage should be expanded. At present, university employment and information bureaux are available in only a few universities. It is advisable to extend the service to all universities and colleges in the country as quickly as possible.

As regards the school stage, it is felt that there should be a full-time career adviser and educational guidance counsellor at the rate of at least one per District. These should be supported by the present system of career

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masters in schools who are part-time officers appointed from among teachers whose tuition work is reduced suitably. The Government of India have a proposal to launch a pilot project by choosing one or two Districts in each State for the appointment of full-time career and guidance officers. It is also proposed to have a district level committee so that close coordination can be had with parents, teachers and local industry. These measures together with a vigorous drive for expansion of small scale industry and encouragement of the self- employment sector. may solve the unemployment problem to a great extent.

Ninth Report of the National Council for Women's Education April 1968 to March 1970

The National Council for Women's Education, which was set up in 1959 on the recommendations of the National Committee on Women's Education, with Dr. Durgabai Deshmukh as its Chairman, was reconstituted during the period under report. In order to enlarge the scope and functions of the Council the original Resolution No. 41- 10/59-B. 3 dt. 6th July, 1959 was partially modified by Resolution No. F. 15-20/65-BSE.4 dated 16th July, 1966. The names of the members of the reconstituted Council are given at Annexure XII.