A Mother's Road Map to Board Exams

The board exam result is always thrilling for me ; I live through the experience every year.

The results are always a huge surprise; the most easy going students will score very high and some diligent ones get much below than expected.

My daughter passed class 12^th in 2018 and many in her class surprised me; most got above 90 without a lot of struggle.

The journey of 10^th and 12^th boards is arduous and taxing . I took a sabbatical from work when my daughter was in class 8^th. She was doing well in Social Sciences but Maths and Science was not her game.

The school teachers are not really helpful in the pursuance of academic excellence.. it is the journey of the child and the parents…more so the mother.

This blog is about my learning on how to crack the board exam with a view to get more than 95%

As I mentioned, I took a sabbatical when my daughter was in class 8^th struggling with the mounting pressure of Mathematics. Finding the right tutor was the first task at hand, the current tutors were not getting the technique right and we were wasting time and money.

Continuous prospecting helped me find the right maths teacher who came at home, and in a month her maths scores started to reach above 85%.

This got her report card sorted and she was in the top five in the class. This diligence continued till class 10^th when assessment was still internal.

Science and Maths tutors came at home and the rest was managed on her own and the labour of 6 to 7 hours daily went on …finally the 10^th result was 96%.

One milestone was over.

The next challenge was subject selection for class 11^th.

Humanities was a no brainer but we were made to believe that maths should be added to her subjects.

It was not the right choice.

For a student, who is not comfortable with Maths, it will eat into the preparation time of other subjects and the overall result will get compromised.

Apart from that, this adds a lot of anxiety to a child’s life, especially if it is imposed on them.

Many kids can now drop Maths in class 9^th which is a welcome initiative. We must let the child enjoy and excel at what their natural abilities aid them.

We decided to drop Maths and go for the Humanities with Economics combo.

My daughter was loving the subjects and enjoying the discourse.

I was watching the results over last few years, and noticed Humanities students were scoring almost full marks in their subjects in the board results.

However, in the school assesments in class 11^th and 12^th they were being given not more than 80%.

I was groping in the dark. Meetings with school teachers didn’t quite give me any satisfactory answers.

With some trial and error, we realized that the trick lies in answer writing and that there is a prescribed format of CBSE that must be followed.

Each checker gets about 20 bundles to check in a day hence students have to work on the presentation of their answers. They need to accord the attention of the checker towards the keywords and phrases through highlighting and underlining.

The school was not guiding them in that direction.

Every teacher had her own view, some wanted very long answers, some very short, most were not interested in checking the attempts to solve previous board question papers …all in all the school had left it to parents and students.

We managed to download the answer writing format and question papers of the last 6 to 7 years for all the subjects.

I also managed to reach out to teachers who were board examiners . My daughter attempted over 60 to 70 question papers and they were assessed by these examiners.  Now as I write, it looks very simple but the process was laborious and finding teachers was hard.

Plus the kid is exhausted, household is exhausted and it feels heavy and hard.

Anyhow, the preparation was right and exams went well.

The result was upto our expectation – 97.5%.

She made it to the first cut off list of DU and as a family we were relieved.

Sharing some of my learnings for the parents

·     Choose subjects to the natural ability of your child

·     Find the best tutoring that works for your child- one or one vs group classes.

·     Spend enough time with your children in these years so that they know its team work of the family.

·     Make sure the answer writing format is perfected.

·     Attempt as many question papers as possible

·     Take feedback of board examiners to the sample question papers

·     Write neatly and beautifully

·     Make flow charts wherever possible

·     Stay happy and step out for a coffee with your friends or parents regularly

·     Say a prayer / listen to music/ watch some TV as a leisure activity.

·     Avoid the smartphone completely.

I will end it with a quote from Debjani Maam –

“ the three hours of exam is your opportunity to create magic on the answer sheet ; when the examiner opens to read it make it a delight for them."

My best wishes and love to all the students and parents for all the exams that we take in life.