I am a BSc student, and I’ve seen how lab records and assignments work in undergraduate science programs. Their purpose is to build practical skills, but too often they have become copy-paste exercises.

Practical skills are already tested through practical exams, external vivas, and internal assessments. Even so, students are asked to rewrite the aim, theory, and procedure from the lab manual, sometimes after the exams are over. These records are often only signed, never reviewed, so no one learns anything from them. Assignments suffer the same way: many are copied from the internet or generated by AI, and the instructions rarely state a page limit, format, or marking criteria.

NEP 2020 promises less rote learning and more critical thinking. Repetitive record-writing works against that.

We ask the Ministry of Education and UGC to encourage universities to:

Make lab records focus on observations, calculations, results, and conclusions, not rewritten procedures.
Have records written and signed during or right after the practical.
Require every assignment to state its page limit, format, deadline, and marking criteria.
Replace copy-paste assignments with problem-solving, data analysis, short presentations, or research paper summaries.
Evaluate submitted work and return it with feedback.
We are not asking to lower standards, only to make them worth meeting. If you’ve felt this too, please sign and share.