The announcement of the Common Undergraduate Entrance Test (CUET) by the University Grants Commission (UGC), although disappointing, should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the trajectory of the Indian education system, its enhanced status in a globalised economy since the 1990s, and the zeal with which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, since it assumed power in 2014, and especially after 2019, has set about reforming the sectorThe New Education Policy (NEP) of 2019 has opened up unprecedented ways of allowing private players to take over the system by introducing a slew of flexible measures that sound impressive but will seriously affect education of children for whom public provision is critical. Other disquieting measures include the side-stepping of the RTE Act of 2009; reduced allocations to child-related programmes such as the ICDS and the mid-day meal scheme (40% reduction in real terms for both schemes); and drastic reduction or outright elimination in funding schemes for tribal communities and scheduled castes.
All this comes with plans to invest in digital education, virtual laboratories, television programmes and simulated learning environments, even as the pandemic and closure of schools provides us with robust and mounting evidence of the catastrophic consequences of online learning for the poor and the marginalised. Education is now openly and unabashedly meant to serve a neo-liberal economic and social agenda and the announcement of the CUET is one more step in that direction.
The CUET is projected as a “bias-free” test that gives every child an equal chance of entering college, irrespective of the school system or state board affiliations as well as of social and cultural privilege. On the face of it, the argument is appealing and fits in with the popular meritocracy hypothesis. The assumption here is that given a more or less equivalent syllabus and the benefit of 12 years of schooling, chances of success or failure in a final and summative assessment be it the CBSE, a state board examination or now the common entrance exam, are determined by each child’s capacity, hard work and effort. The onus of success is on the child and the family.
The reality, however, is more complex and the subtle ways in which seemingly equal opportunities are in fact not at all equal, are not always obvious. In India, a hierarchical system of schooling that corresponds with children’s social and material status reproduces, rather than erases, discrimination and exclusion, rendering the competition for college admissions unfair and already biased. Considering the available evidence on high-stakes testing, it is highly likely that children coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and poorly funded schools will lose out on more than just a college admission.
The CUET is likely to provide little space for serious and engaged thinking, critical reflection or analysis, and will force schools to create learning spaces where students are assisted in cramming information and content that will be determined through processes over which they have little control.
In short, the content of the test will determine the experience of learning, especially in schools with limited resources, and parents in desperation will turn to coaching centres and their expertise as the competition increases. This extremely high-stake test is likely to undermine the school experience of children of all social groups, but its impact will surely be most devastating for the poor and the most marginalised.
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