Grades vs. Marks

Grades vs. Marks
Which one is better?
India , has been using the mark system for years. It was just a few years back when the grade system was introduced . Since then, it has been debated that which system is better. Both have their own merits and demerits.
Grade system follows the philosophy that all students of a grade are equally intelligent. In Mark System , the philosophy followed is that the students who score more are superior or intelligent. The Mark system is a more competitive system in which students get to know their exact scores while in the grading system the marks are divided into many ranges. In the Mark system, a student can surpass another student by fraction of a mark . Here students work harder even for that single mark. This promotes competition effectively but at the same time it demotes ,the value of gaining knowledge instead of just getting good marks, greatly . In this students focus just on getting marks instead of focusing on gaining complete knowledge. On the contrary, the grading system divides the scores that students receive into major groups known as grades. Here a student cannot prove himself to be better than another student by a fraction of marks as each grade contains marks from a range of 5% to 15% marks. Thus , the grading system emphasizes the value of gaining knowledge over marks. It is also true that the grade system reduces stress upon the students as students no longer have to worry about scoring few marks more or less than his peer or the marks expected out of him. However ,when schools and colleges start considering students for admission , they get a lot of difficulties in short listing the students as, they're grouped by their mark ranges in the grade system. It is comparatively easier to short list students who had been under the mark system . Despite that , universities and interviewers still prefer people who have proper knowledge of the subject they study. There can be cases where the paper might be of varying difficulties, the paper can be either too easy or too hard from what it is supposed to be. So , if a student scores 89% score in a subject but still is unable to answer questions asked by the interviewer , then he won't be able to get past the interview. Despite that it still doesn't prove that marks are inferior to grades as not everyone prefers marks over knowledge. A student might not even be able to give the interview if his scores are below the cut-off. Thus in some situations , marks can be superior to grades and vice versa.
Thus we can conclude that the superior choice among grades and marks depends upon , how much value one gives to knowledge and high scores. If one considers knowledge and right education to be superior to high marks , then grade system is better than mark system with respect to him. Else mark system is better than the grade system. So the superiority among Grade system and Mark System depends on where they are being used. For schools , colleges and other education systems Grade System is a better choice while for Competitive exams , Mark system is a better choice.
Tapasvi Singh Panwar,
(XI A, G.D Goenka Public School , Dwarka)