Why marking, grading and Rating system is wrong in India?

I still remember how one parent pulled up his daughter for getting 94% marks in grade 12th in Delhi and saying, it will be difficult getting admission in the “prestigious colleges” in Delhi university as the cut-off for the “prestigious programs” is almost 100%.

I was shocked and surprised and the kid was left speechless and almost in tears as she has put her best efforts and was feeling that everyone will praise her for what she achieved. This is the worst thing to hurt anyone’s self-worth and self-esteem.

The way examination and marking system has been evolving over last 20-25 years have been very hurting and painful and the assumption is that any intelligence of child is directly related to the marks he/she gets. The expectations of people in society is anything less than 95% is not worth and anything less than 90% marks is just an average performance. 

The whole system is so bad that students, parents, teachers and society at large is just running a race to get 100%. This is totally wrong as “perfect” is not right and possible and there is always scope for improvement and learning. The assumption is that the kids who get 100% are perfect. This creates a sense of either superiority or inferiority complex in children and also creates FEAR among many of them, rather than having a desire to learn and apply learning. 

The focus has been increasingly on bookish knowledge than application of knowledge or skill building. So anyone great in arts, sports or culinary arts etc. is looked upon as not-intelligent or a weak student. The real challenge is that even teachers are fed-up with this system and there are so many teachers and school leaders who make changes at their own levels but then parents force them to change to the “typical exam and marks based system”. 

This is so ingrained in the society that even the rating system of services provided by many companies including UBER, Zomato etc expect that the best rating of 5 should be given to all providers and anything like 3 or 4 is a problem. The assumption is 5 is perfect – again there is immense scope of improvement possible in the services and there is nothing perfect. 

I asked my friends in Europe and they shared that they hardly find any Uber driver with more than 3.7-3.8 rating as the normal rating for anyone doing their job as per define criteria is 3 and someone going extra-mile is rated as 4 and the rating of 5 is rare.

In India, every driver or Zomato delivery person will request you for a rating of 5. I have personally seen some drivers rated as 4.95 and the service has been extremely sad. When I rate them as 3 or 4 – Uber asks; was there a problem??? 

Many times the problem is of UBER or Zomato or other service providers and here you can’t rate them or raise complaints easily. Reaching out to Uber and many other service providers for raising a complaint is extremely difficult. The process is so complex that you get fed-up. So they just want that every driver or delivery person should be rated 5 but no rating for these companies. This is extremely stress and fear driven system and must be stopped.

The reason I wrote this note is to highlight how much pseudo-fear we are creating in everyone for marks and ratings and grades. The exact definition of intelligence or excellence is so skewed that the society is being created of either 100% or Rated 5 and below that is a problem area. The whole focus is on a herd mentality. No one realizes that each one is unique and special with some qualities and that should be nurtured.

The real herd mentality can be seen by so many Edu-tech unicorns who are valued in billions of dollars in India and who are just focusing on “getting you perfect marks”. They are adding fuel to a Fire – which is engulfing India’s talent and society negatively.

I really wish and hope that we “TRANSFORM” education fully – not just by making small changes as suggested in the New education policy.

Please let each child live, learn and enjoy their unique gifts and strengths and lead a happy life and remove FEAR as the only motivator of performance. FEAR is the most dangerous factor in a society

May God bless us all and remove the FEAR!