Page 32 - EducationWorld November 2020

ANNIVERSARY ESSAY

Exam Boards should publish

School Rankings

GEETA GANDHI KINGDON

ANY EDUCATIONALLY ADVANCED, especial- Several countries and exam boards
ly OECD countries, rank schools on the basis
of average marks of students in school-leaving abroad publish school rankings based on
Mboard examinations. In India, neither national common exam results, indicating that
(CBSE and CISCE) nor state exam boards do so.
There are two major arguments in favour of publishing the benefits of transparency outweigh
academic school rankings. First, the information will en- costs
able parents to make better informed school choices for
their children. Secondly, when parents know the average
marks of all local schools, low ranked schools are subjected objective school rankings based on board exam results of
to greater pressure to improve teaching-learning standards schools, and subjective school rankings (based on EW sam-
to attract and retain students. ple respondents’ perceptions of ‘academic reputation’) dif-
A powerful incentive for school managements to invest fer substantially, with a correlation coefficient of only 0.65.
greater effort into institutional improvement and enhance This suggests that EW sample respondents’ perceptions
students’ learning outcomes is provision of information about the academic performance of schools in their city/
to parents and communities about school performance in town are far removed from reality. This gap between per-
board exams. Such information empowers parents to hold ception and reality is a strong argument for government
teachers and schools accountable. In addition, sharing mandating ranking of schools according to board exam
information about the relative learning outcomes of vari- results. This would enable parents to evaluate the relative
ous schools in a city or town provokes healthy inter-school academic merit of all schools. In fairness, it should be stated
competition which stimulates greater effort by teachers and that EducationWorld editors have persistently solicited av-
institutional managements. erage scores of schools, but exam boards have been loathe
However, the social benefits of parental choice and inter- to part with this data.
school competition have to be balanced against the disad- he resistance of India’s school boards to transparently
vantages of ranking schools on the basis of exam results. Tpublish schools’ average exams scores is probably due to
Apart from objective rankings being based entirely on the resistance from teachers unions and old-fashioned socialist
narrow metric of academic outcomes, ranks awarded may sentiment of not encouraging inter-school competition. But
be reflecting the family backgrounds of students, and are despite similar resistance, governments of several OECD
not necessarily indicative of institutional quality. Schools member countries have pressed ahead to publish annual
admitting pupils from monetarily better-off and more rankings.
educated households tend to attain high academic scores. The good news is that following the good example of
But this is often attributable to exclusive schools ‘cream- the World University Rankings published annually by
skimming’ most enabled children, rather than their better the London-based QS and Times Higher Education, the
teachers and administration. government of India has acknowledged the need to rank
Despite such apprehensions, several countries and exam higher education institutions. In 2015, the Union educa-
boards abroad publish school rankings based on common tion ministry introduced the National Institutional Ranking
exam results, indicating that the benefits of transparency Framework (NIRF). In 2019, Niti Aayog — the Central gov-
outweigh social costs. However, many of them have refined ernment’s think tank — also started ranking Indian states
their ranking methodologies by publishing sophisticated in a School Education Quality Index (SEQI) for which this
‘value-added’ league-tables that rank schools according to author was a peer-reviewer.
their ‘gain in achievement,’ (i.e, improvement in board re- Against this backdrop, this seems the right time to in-
sults over the previous year), rather than according to board troduce transparent K-12 academic school rankings based
exam results of just one year. on their students’ performance in board exams, after taking
With unavailability of learning outcomes data from exam precautions to factor in the moderation and marks-inflation
boards, for over a decade EducationWorld has been pub- practices of several exam boards. Liberal marking necessi-
lishing annual school rankings based on the perceptions of tates basing school rankings on the median rather than on
a substantial sample — including parents, principals, teach- average scores of schools. Institution rankings should also
ers, students — of 12,000-15,000 respondents. Under the factor-in schools’ success in terms of their students getting
EW methodology, schools in discrete categories are rated admission into best undergrad colleges which is gauged by
under 12-14 parameters including ‘academic reputation’. success in public entrance exams such as IIT-JEE, NEET,
However, in a paper I co-authored with Prashant Bhat- SAT, CLAT, etc.
tacharji and published in the Delhi-based journal Contem- (Prof. Geeta Kingdon is chair of Education Economics & International
porary Education Dialogue (2016), we demonstrated that Development at the Institute of Education, University College London)

32 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2020