Most people would remember the Hollywood character when they read Iron Man. However I am talking about our own Sardar Patel, who made India by merging 565  princely states and creating a united country which today is all set to become the 3rd largest economy in the world.

What primary and secondary education in India today needs is one such Iron Man who can unite the country’s multi-board system. India as of now has approximately 30 recognised boards. While most have difficulty in choosing which board is best for their child would have option to choose between :

• State Board
• CBSE
• ICSE
• IGCSE
• IB

However even more difficult is the college’s role where they are getting marksheets from 30 different boards who have different marking styles / different subjects / different dates of result. Then comes entrance exams – one by state govt and another by central govt. So in Ahmedabad if you want to get in to engineering you need to do GujCET for admission in to LD Engineering and JEE for  Nirma University. Not to mention for IIT you need to pass JEE – Advanced. So the child has to study for atleast 3 exams, board exam, state entrance test and central entrance test. It may seem that the curriculum is similar, but definitely the exam pattern is different.

The government tried to do a common entrance test for across India and suggested that admissions to be done based on that results. However students stopped attending schools and focussed on getting score only in the exam.So the government has put a 40% to 60% weightage to board marks before giving admission. So that again puts us back to square one – how do you compare the different marksheets of different boards. Another system which has been made by colleges is allotting quota system. So they find a ratio of total students of the board who appeared for admission (or passed in the board exam) and make allocate their seats accordingly. However this does benefit boards in which there are students who wouldn’t want to pursue college education.

To streamline these boards the National Curriculum Framework was setup in 2005 however till date not all boards have adopted it. What we require is a “National Assessment Framework” as eventually we should produce comparable marksheets. Then we will be able to decide who are the best brains in the country to get in to best colleges irrespective of the state he is studying in.

Doesn’t future of the country deserve a better way to get into colleges?
USA has implemented SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) since 1926 and even today most colleges use GPA (grade point average) allotted by school exam and SAT scores in combination to give admission to colleges. This also helps international students to sit at par with US students. This is how lot of Indian students get admitted in US, while face injustice in India. No doubt Indians spend about $13 billion for college education in US.

We need one Iron Man – Sardar Patel to unite all the educational boards and colleges and make India one of the world’s best place to study.