Competition Exams and Topper Praise in India: A Media Case Study in Educational (In)equality

What does it say about a democratic society such as India that proactively and publicly praises high achieving students for excellence in education? On the surface, it shows a profound commitment to education and student success. Few countries, if any, publicly celebrate their high achieving students the way India does. Referred to as toppers, the pictures and exam percentages of these high-achieving students can be seen everywhere across the media following the announcements of high stakes exam results each year. On billboards, front- and full-page newspaper headlines, and more recently through digital social media, the faces of exam toppers are presented to the public in these various media as symbols and signifiers of the social importance and value of a good education and hard work. And by far the most celebrated students are the national exam toppers for the annual grade twelve standard board exam. Board exams are based on a standardized curriculum, and commonly, the instructional content and pedagogical methods are to teach to the test—favoring rote memorization and test-taking strategies over the acquisition of applied educational skills. Thus, the actual test drives the entire educational system. This increasingly global educational practice is rooted in a belief that high stakes testing identifies the most talented and hard-working students, while weeding out students who underperform. However, this belies the structural inequities in this so-called meritocratic assessment system, and it conceals the ways in which educational policy makers, and the media who support their agendas, condition and normalize such educational policies to the public. This chapter draws on a longitudinal media case study from 2017 to 2021 bounded around the annual announcement of standard board exam results in India. Engaging ethnographic content analysis, this study examines mixed media data. The broadest finding is that competition exams and tactics of topper praise both condition and normalize society to such practices and serve to conceal vital voices of resistance to the inherent equity demerits in the so-called meritocratic exam system.