The recent
CBSE paper leak presents an occasion to consider wide-ranging reforms in the
process by which we assess student learning in our schools to make it more
pedagogically appropriate, less stressful, and relevant to modern society. At a
time when public discourse on education commonly references 21st
century skills, a Board examination that only emphasises rote learning and the
ability to memorise and reproduce facts is an anachronism that has outlived its
utility.
The purpose
of assessment should be to illuminate where a learner is on her path of
learning at a given point in time. This implies that learning is a continuous,
ongoing process that does not end at a particular stage, in keeping with the
internationally accepted principles of lifelong learning. Equally importantly,
the assessment of learning should lead to an understanding of a student’s
ability to construct and apply learnt knowledge as opposed to her ability to
memorise factual information that will not be retained after the examination.
A conscious
move away from the current situation was made when the Right to Education Bill,
2005, was drafted on the basis of recommendations of a sub-committee of the
Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). While recommending the removal of
all Board examinations at grade 8 level and a no-detention policy, the
sub-committee also recommended the introduction of Continuous Comprehensive
Evaluation (CCE) to ensure that learning was assessed regularly through the
school year in order to track student progress. This came from the belief that
labelling children examination failures at such a young age was harmful to
their self-esteem and their ability to stay engaged with learning. The
sub-committee recognised that the majority of children in the schooling system
come from less privileged backgrounds, many of them being first generation
school-goers, and failing them would have the immediate consequence of pushing
them out of school.
As the then
Director in the Ministry of HRD who assisted the sub-committee and worked on
the draft, I can vouch for the fact that CCE at the elementary stage (grades 1
through 8) was expected to be driven by NCERT and customised by states based on
their own specific requirements. It was never envisaged that CBSE, a Board of secondary
education, would be responsible for its design and implementation, as
eventually happened. The manner in which CCE was implemented carried within
itself the seeds of its own downfall, increasing pressure on teachers and
establishing a complicated assessment system that was never fully understood by
those most affected by it.
Assessment
of children’s learning should be an in-built mechanism, with teachers
undertaking regular, ongoing monitoring of what has been learnt by the
individual child so that corrective action can be taken in time – in other
words, assessment for learning. This is of course, easier said than
done, given the conditions under which many teachers function, especially in
government schools, with multi-grade classrooms, and pupil-teacher ratios in
excess of 100:1 in many states. Yet a portfolio containing work done by each
child over a period of time remains the best indicator of student progress and
can help to scaffold and support individual learning.
This in-classroom
assessment should be accompanied by diagnostic, low-stakes, external assessments
to indicate the health of the education system. The results of such
assessments, such as the National Achievement Survey (NAS) recently carried out
by NCERT, provide policy makers with clear information about the functioning of
the system and help to identify shortcomings for correction. After the poor
showing of Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in the Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA) 2009, India has stayed away from international
learning assessments like PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS, but there has been some
discussion lately around the possibility of participation in PISA 2021. In such
a situation, undertaking national diagnostic assessments that provide
comparative data over time and across regions acquires renewed importance.
Using Board
examination results for selection to higher education institutions has become
an annual farce, with students scoring unrealistically high marks, pushing up
the cut off levels each year. Eliminating the Board examination altogether and
replacing it with an individual entrance test or a standardised assessment like
an indigenously developed GRE- or GMAT-like test would remove stress and
provide a reliable mechanism for selection. Combined with a portfolio
describing a student’s progress over the years, this would provide a far more
accurate picture of abilities than the current Board results.
With the
establishment of the new National Testing Agency announced in the last Budget,
there is an historic opportunity to initiate far-reaching reforms in the way in
which we assess student learning, and to drag our education system into the 21st
century. It is unfortunate that the committee set up to review the CBSE leak
has its mandate confined to the leaks only, instead of focusing on the big
picture. The earlier experiment of CCE may not have been fully successful, but
that should not deter us from putting in place more carefully designed assessment
systems that help all stakeholders, and most of all, our children.
