Rating Agencies - How Good?

Rating mandatory for CBSE schools
CHARU SUDAN KASTURI

New Delhi, Sept. 26: Parents will soon be able to choose a CBSE school for their children by consulting an official ratings system rather than having to depend on reputation and perceptions.

All Central Board of Secondary Education schools will for the first time need to undergo formal accreditation by a set of licensed agencies, and must repeat the process after every few years.

A CBSE draft note suggests amendments to the board’s affiliation and examination by-laws, laying down that every school must get itself accredited, and that this must be done within a time limit. The note suggests “a span of three to five years”.

The periodic accreditation will allow the CBSE to maintain a database of quality standards at affiliated institutions in the country. Nearly 10,500 schools — public, private and aided — in India and abroad are affiliated to the board.

Schools will, however, not have to compulsorily disclose their rating, the proposal states. Instead, interested students can seek details on the rating of a school from the rating agency.

“We believe that no affiliated school should have a problem getting rated by a registered agency. Students have a right to know the quality of the school they go to,” a senior CBSE official told The Telegraph.

At present, the CBSE formally examines the quality of a school only at the time it seeks affiliation to the board or wants to expand — from a secondary school to a higher secondary school, for instance.

Education minister Kapil Sibal had proposed a school accreditation mechanism while announcing his 100-day agenda at the start of his term. Earlier this month, at the completion of the first 100 days of the UPA’s second tenure, Sibal had indicated his ministry was working on that proposal. He had then said accreditation would be optional for schools.

But the CBSE, in its draft note circulated to all affiliated schools, has specified that “all affiliated schools would be required to get themselves accredited within a reasonable period of time”. The note provides details of the school accreditation regime that the CBSE and Sibal’s human resource development ministry are proposing.

Under the proposal, the CBSE will set up an expert advisory committee to regulate private accrediting agencies. Private rating agencies can apply to the committee which, after scrutinising applications, will issue licences. Only licensed agencies can accredit schools.

The board will not itself accredit the schools but will act as an appellate body if the rating agencies are unhappy with the expert advisory committee’s decisions.

If our previous experience with Rating Agencies is to be used as yardstick, this new idea of CBSE will be an additional means of extending the tentacles of corruption.
As we all know India comes in the list of most corrupt countries in the world.

We have seen how the rating agencies in the financial markets failed in USA. Fitch Ratings, Moody's and Standard and Poor's are the three rating agencies in the USA. They are also known as the three sisters.They gave the best possible ratings to all the banks and institutions which failed recently. And these Rating Agencies have the audacity to issue ratings to sovereign governments.

I have seen how the ISO: 9000 certificates are issued by the Certification Agencies. They hardly check any books or the system as they are supposed to do. As long as they are paid their fees, the certification continues.

Lately, we have seen how officers of AICTE have taken money an issued accreditation to institutions to make them Deemed Universities.

After seeing the above, how can we believe that the Accreditation Agencies will give genuine certificates. They will also take money and issue accreditation certificates.

The only solution is to have a second tier organisation which would check the performance of these rating agencies.

And if the issue is important and involves large monetary transactions there could be a third tier to check the 1st and 2nd tier.