By Ashok Pandey
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced schoolchildren to keep at house for the second consecutive academic year. Worse, the new strain appears determined to have an effect on college-going youngsters. Amid increasing anxiousness, security and wellness issues, conducting board examinations involving 3.5 million students in CBSE schools became a national furore, inviting Prime Minister’s intervention.
Now that the examinations for class 10 stand cancelled and postponed for class 12, numerous realities are staring at students, parents, schools and policymakers. The current selection exacerbates broader issues for repurposing education and accelerating examination reform in the nation.
The bold pronouncements in the NEP 2020 on holistic assessment—setting up of the National Assessment Centre PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development)—place an further onus on the CBSE to take the situation head-on.
Soothsayers have argued that a year-finish summative examination can not judge the future of a student. Despite this, an selection to include things like the cumulative impact of internal assessment, periodic test scores and class 9 scores as plausible markers to prepare class 10 benefits faces opposition from the similar persons, defeating their earlier logic. The pandemic and the NEP 2020 are steering us once again towards conducting more formative assessments that CBSE schools practised throughout 2010-15.
The new assessment—360 degrees, encompassing self, peer and parental feedback—broadens the scope of ‘assessment for learning’. It catalyses selection about grades, instructional requires and curriculum. Additionally, it would inspire educators to ponder mastering outcomes, competencies and syncing of pedagogies, engagement and enjoy for mastering. The new scheme instils partnerships and collaborations amongst students from early on. Involving students in enhancing every single other’s improvement and validating qualities and talents will support shape values and personalities.
All teachers know by encounter that one can not predict the future accomplishments of youngsters from present skills. Benjamin Bloom, we all swear by, stated, “What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.” The quest for mastering and evaluation, thus, ought to concentrate on self-improvement and equity. Participation, undertaking considering, analysis and presentation are the hallmarks of new classrooms exactly where a teacher is a table-hopping participant. The teacher also enjoys the autonomy to program activities with students and exchange feedback.
The mere logistics of conducting summative assessment for more than 2 million students in class 10 alone tends to make us wonder how substantially worth the work, time and price this is? The actual price tag of conducting examinations is exorbitant. Several teachers—deputed as sensible examiners, on invigilation duties, central evaluation and once again for compartment exams—keep away from students for weeks. The chance price of their absence is irrecoverable, ask any college principal.
Coming to classes 11-12, the rush for coaching, and a race for marks and cracking entrance exams lead to absenteeism and alienation from college life and from the most effective that campuses provide. A professor from IIT Delhi is researching why students searching for admissions in IITs do not exhibit sufficient expertise of India’s heritage, culture and values. While it would be instructive to know the findings, the reality remains that the coaching institutions—relying on cramming, competitors and cracking—gleefully mock at the other Cs: creativity, collaboration, communication and important considering.
The NEP2020 invests a lot in the last 4 years of schooling. Packaging the finest human qualities, neighborhood service, volunteerism, innovation and problem-solving in the teens can be daunting if they escape from the temples of mastering to the coaching centres. Schools look the other way haplessly at these wilful, on-roll dropouts.
The NEP2020 states that “While the Board exams for Grades 10 and 12 will be continued, the existing system of Board and entrance examinations shall be reformed to eliminate the need for undertaking coaching classes.” Ironically, an amazing billion-dollar deal is reportedly by means of, reasserting the may possibly of coaching, even just before the ink used to draft the policy is dry. The pandemic has disrupted our lives regarding wellness and financial wellbeing like never ever just before. However, the pandemic would administer a tension test to repair education is surprising.
The author, an educationist, is director, Ahlcon Group of Schools. Views are individual