By Gokulananda Nandan
Being an IB educator and examiner, I request IB to cancel the May 2021 exam in India as the students will be the most impacted for no fault of theirs. In many schools, the pupils have suffered loss of learning due to the technological instability of online classes, which has resulted in lack of confidence among the learners, and less contact time between them and the tutors while completing their internal assessments.
I acknowledge that IB has been in discussion with schools about the situation, and the preparation of students for the exam. However, some institutions have been compelled to opt for the exam-route as it would be difficult to convince IB why a non-exam route could be a better option for these establishments as the Ministry of Education, Government of India, hasn’t cancelled the final exams of the Indian curriculum.
Agreed that IB has noticed a negative anomaly between the predicted grades by the teachers and the actual scores of students in May 2020. This aberration resulted in the pass rate and the number of diplomas to go up to 85.18% and 59.3% respectively, compared to 77.83% and 54.07% in May 2019. Therefore, it is clear that IB would like the schools to choose the exam route to assess students. However, the learners would be assessed for what they have not chosen as this option is picked on their behalf.
Historically, IB has noticed that the teachers have had some difficulty in predicting the exact grade of the students at the end of the academic year. The schools would blame the pupils for scoring badly in IB exams, rather than predict the grades and face the wrath of students and parents for not achieving the forecasted scores. This year, as all internal assessments are going to be moderated by external examiners, the students should be properly guided by the teachers to complete them, but this hasn’t happened so far.
As all the 146 IB schools in India are private schools, the cancellation and execution of the final exam is not in the purview of the ministry. Therefore, IB has to take a decision independent of the Ministry of Education in India as the Indian educational system assesses students on core academic content unlike IB.
Though the students in my school are well prepared and have completed IAs, I am not writing this letter as a spokesperson of my students or school. But I am writing it on behalf of those learners who have been bereft of getting all assistance to complete their IAs and guidance to be well prepared for the exam that is supposed to begin from April 29 2021.
Keeping in mind the interest of the main stakeholder of our education system – the students – I would recommend that IB cancel the May 2021 series exam in India, and give pupils more time to complete their IAs and assess them on the performance demonstrated in their IAs, TOK, EE and CAS.
Based on the research study endorsed by IB titled “A study of the post-secondary outcomes of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme alumni in leading universities in Asia-Pacific”, it is proved that IB students are more prepared than non-IB students for their next stage of life, thanks to the rigorous training of various skills like cognitive, critical thinking, leadership and communication, among many others. It is obvious that IB students manage to acquire these dispositions not because of academic content but due to its application in writing IAs, TOK and EE, and gathering CAS experience. While we all know that these skills are more important than the knowledge of core academic content to be successful in the 21st century, it’s time that we adults not only do show that we believe in it, but also put it into practice by cancelling the exam during this tumultuous time. This move will reiterate that it is not the exam, but the process that leads up to this exam which will prepare a student for life.
Gokulananda Nandan is an examiner at International Baccalaureate besides being a Spanish teacher and an IBDP internal exam coordinator.
