New Delhi, June 25: Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal has mooted afresh a proposal to make Class X board examinations optional to reduce pressure on students and parents.

Sibal will need co-operation from states — Bengal has already raised objections —and powerful private school lobbies, apart from a bureaucracy keen on maintaining the status quo, to breathe life into the initiative rooted in a plan conceived when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister.

The minister will also have to convince several parents, students and school administrators who have repeatedly argued that tough examinations prepare the young for a competitive life ahead.

Unveiling his 100-day agenda for action today, Sibal said his ministry would draft a road map to make the Class X board examinations optional.

Students who wish to apply for Class XI in a school different from where they complete Class X can take the board examination. But those who are to stay on in the same school need not take the examination, under the plan Sibal articulated.

“It is unacceptable and unnecessary for our students to be put under such pressure. We have to change India’s examination system,” Sibal said.

The minister said he personally wanted India to adopt a single-board examination for Class XII to replace the separate tests held by multiple school boards at present.

He clarified, however, that the Class XII test was only his “wish” and not a part of the ministry’s 100-day agenda. The HRD ministry, he said, will hold consultations with state governments to formulate a policy on the issue.

In addition to making the Class X board examination optional, the ministry will also evolve a mechanism to shift from marking to grading for schoolchildren, Sibal said.

But administrators — both retired and those currently handling education — pointed out that Sibal’s plans were neither new nor likely to be any easier to implement than on earlier occasions.

Many private schools have, on each occasion, challenged plans to scrap board examinations. “Parents want their children to go to schools that best prepare them for the competition ahead. Board examination results show up schools with the best record. Parents have a right to choose the best school for their ward and the school has a right to prove it is the best,” the principal of a Delhi school said, requesting anonymity.

The pressure on students, the principal said, is a result of competition for limited higher education opportunities that cannot be eased by replacing competitive examinations.

“Government schools, on the other hand, have always been willing to accept the scrapping of exams, as they are not in competition to use public exams to prove any superiority,” a retired school education secretary said.

State governments have traditionally opposed any central imposition of examination rules, the retired secretary said. But Mayavati today signalled a shift from marks to grades in Uttar Pradesh schools.