Students’ performances in the school exams in Classes XI and XII and in the Class X boards will help determine their Class XII marks in 2021 under a formula the board that conducts the Indian School Certificate (ISC) exam proposed to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

Projects and practical work make up another “component” in the formula, as does the school’s best performance in the ISC in the past six years, the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) said in its affidavit.

The apex court has given in-principle approval but will take the final decision on Monday.

Students’ performances in any subject in Classes XI and XII will be “measured through their best marks” obtained in the two years.

A “scaled score” based on these marks will make up a 60 per cent component of the marks awarded in the subject for ISC 2021. Projects and practical work in the subject will account for 30 per cent, and the Class X boards will make up 10 per cent.

While the project and practical work and the best marks in Classes XI and XII would measure the “subject proficiency of the candidates”, the council said, the Class X board marks would measure their “general proficiency”.

“To arrive at the weights, detailed analyses were performed on the data from the past board examinations from the years 2015 to 2020,” the affidavit says.

It says the factors computed include a raw standard deviation (common for all subjects) for a school, which it explains as “the standard deviation of the percentage based on the raw totals (out of 400) obtained by all candidates of the school appearing for English and at least three other subjects in 2021”.

Another computed factor is the “subject raw average percentage for a school” which the affidavit says is “the school average percentage in the theory paper for the subject in 2021”.

ICSE formula

The affidavit also gives a formula for awarding marks to the council’s Class X (ICSE) students.

Project and practical work in the various subjects; the students’ performance in the school exams in Classes IX and X measured through their best marks; and the school’s best performance over the past six years are the components used to arrive at the formula, the affidavit says.

The affidavit says the best year for a school between 2015 and 2020 is the year in which its students achieved the best average percentage in the ICSE in terms of the aggregate scores out of 500.

For Class X students, the subject marks will reflect 70 per cent of a scaled score and 30 per cent of the subject project and practical work.

The affidavit says the council constituted “an expert panel” that analysed data for approximately 100,000 students from about 1,200 schools for the ISC, and 220,000 students from 2,500 schools for the ICSE, to help arrive at the formulas.

Reactions

In Calcutta, school heads and teachers said that giving weightage to the Class X board exams while awarding the ISC marks was fair because the former was “a uniform examination” conducted by the council.

But many teachers contested the logic of giving additional weightage to the school’s best performance over six years. “It is likely to put the smaller schools with fewer top scorers at a disadvantage,” a school principal said.

Another principal echoed this person: “Why should a student in 2021 be judged by how students in other years performed? It is unfair on good students.”

Most schools are still awaiting a formal communication from the council on the formula.