Introduction:

• A vast number of India’s adolescents feel seriously unhappy and resentful. 
• Ignoring or oppressing adolescents is not uncommon in other countries, but India’s case is somewhat extreme. Over more than a century, our system of schooling has honed its tools to oppress and defeat the adolescent.
• The tool used to subdue the rebellious adolescent mind is the Board examination.

Issues with Board exam

1. Tends to decide future of child unfairly

• The term ‘board’ has acquired connotations of terror for the young on account of the darkness into which it pushes them before some are let back out into normal light and further education. 
• Fear of failing in it and thereby closing all doors to a worthwhile future figures in many autobiographies written during the colonial period.

     2.Secret procedures of marking

• Boards of examinations maintain a tight secrecy over how a young student will be marked and declared either ‘pass’ or ‘fail’. 
• A tight cover of confidentiality is maintained to conceal the abysmal quality of the marking system, question papers and the evaluation process.

    3.Learning distorted

• Popular understanding of education, which is widely shared in political and official circles, equates learning with performance on tests. 
• The nationwide industry that specialises in offering help in passing examinations and entrance tests makes no distinction between cramming, cheating and learning. 

    4.Abysmal teacher training

• Teachers are taught about these common symptoms, and those who learn them well enough to discuss them correctly get through their B.Ed. (Bachelor of Education) examination without much cramming. 
• When they become teachers, they soon realise that passing the B.Ed. examination is a lot easier than dealing with real adolescents — boys or girls.

Conclusion

• Plenty of ideas for reforming the Boards and the examination system they govern have been given over the years. Some of these ideas have been put into practice here and there, as isolated steps lacking a wider frame of reference to curricular reform. 
• The National Curriculum Framework, 2005 insisted on coherence between reforms in curriculum, examinations and teacher training. This perspective continues to pose a challenge to an institutional structure marked by rivalry and turf wars.