Grade inflation puts educational standards in a bind

livemint.com:

It’s a common experience that students are scoring higher marks in state and national level school leaving (‘Board’) exams today than they have in the past. A direct consequence of this ‘grade inflation’ is that cut-offs for college admissions have also been steadily rising over the years. In the immediate term, higher marks may seem like a win-win, as students, schools, parents and politicians are all happier.

Yet, it has long term detrimental effects on the system as a whole. To understand these better, it is useful to appreciate the origins of grade inflation. Grade inflation is an international phenomenon, but the situation in India is somewhat unique, as we shall see.

Grade inflation in India is a consequence of competition between Boards. In many states, students from both state and central Boards compete for college seats. Colleges select students based on their marks in Board exams, usually not making any adjustments when comparing among Boards.

Even if they wanted to make such adjustments, they would need additional data—usually not supplied by the boards—and have the statistical capacity and manpower to do such analysis for multiple boards. In the 1970s and 1980s, central Boards started awarding higher marks to students in regions where they felt they had to do this for their students to stay competitive with those of corresponding state Boards. Gradually, other Boards realized they could—or had to—do the same and gradually started inflating marks.

Today, it is common for the highest score in each subject to be 100% or very close, often with the overall highest score also nearly 100%. A few Boards display the highest percentage in their exams across years on their websites. In Nagaland, the average of the