Relevance: GS-2: Issues Relating to Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources

Key Phrases: assess core capacities rather than content memorisation, assessment must mainstream holistic capacity development; deep alignment between curriculum goals and assessment processes; higher order thinking skills, 21st century skills, and socio-emotional skills; pedagogic & assessment reforms; competency based education; Holistic Progress Cards

Why in  News?

• High quality educational assessment is central to any well-functioning schooling system
• National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 suggests certain fundamental reforms in the purpose, design, and implementation of assessment.

Key Highlights of the article

• Several national level committees and policies have highlighted the aspect regarding examinations
  • Being extremely content heavy,
  • Leading to rote memorisation and
  • Narrowing down the syllabus that gets transacted in schools.
• Due to this, assessments fail to ensure quality education.
• What is needed today is a progressive system of assessment that could lead the path towards quality education in schools.
  • Assessments need to be more comprehensive, to measure not only learning of the textbook, but also other abilities like analysis, critical thinking, creativity, socio-emotional skills, etc.
  • The culture of assessment in our schooling system must change to become more constructive, developmental, and learning-focused.

To use Assessment as a tool of feedback

• Assessment needs to be visualised as an ongoing process that is instrumental in
  • Understanding how students think and learn.
  • Analysing and interpreting how it is best to address students’ learning needs.
• This will also enable teachers in introspecting about the effectiveness of teaching strategies by providing valuable insights on what and how to change.
• It will also provide inputs to schools on how much they are able to function as learning institutions by reflecting on their processes, their culture, and curriculum.
• At the systemic level, this will provide inputs to policy-makers about the overall performance of the ecosystem with reference to key learning in the context of specific geographies and diverse socio-economic groups.
• The role of assessment to enable learning must be centre-stage– for this, all involved, whether teachers, schools, parents, system must understand that assessment is to enable learning of students and help them realise the goals of education
• The policy also makes some concrete recommendations for transforming Board examinations.
  • NEP 2020 also suggests redesigning Board examinations to make them more valid, reduce academic stress and pressure, and de-emphasize coaching culture. The Board examinations should primarily assess core capacities rather than content memorisation. Focus should be on holistic learning and development rather than a narrow range of content or textbook material learnt in a single stream.
• NEP 2020 also discusses the need for a holistic, 360-degree, multidimensional report that reflects in great detail the progress as well as the uniqueness of each student in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains.
• In achieving this, we need to adhere to certain principles that are briefly outlined below:

Building consensus among stakeholders

This is the first principle. To encourage conversations among institutions and key stakeholders,which will trigger new ideas that enable active collaborations.

• Institutions need to actively collaborate and maintain continuous dialogue.
  • For example, NCERT, SCERT, and Boards should together work towards reforming the curriculum, the syllabus, and associated assessments.
• It is important to recognise the need for a deep alignment between curriculum goals and assessment processes.
  • Competent and well-meaning organisations, universities, and researchers should also be consulted regarding such decisions.

Agreement among stakeholders

This is the Second principle. We need consensus on what are the core and essential competencies that must be assessed through various systems of assessment.

• We need contextualised learning standards, competency frameworks, and assessment processes for all subjects.
• These standards must take into account higher order thinking skills, 21st century skills, and socio-emotional skills that are needed for holistic development of students.
• This will also enable equivalence across Boards, something that is sorely missing in our schooling system today.

Shift in assessment: classroom,school level and at systemic level

Third, in the context of Boards, any change in the policy envisages a shift in assessment, both at the classroom and school level as well as the systemic level.

• Therefore, generating awareness among key stakeholders, such as teachers, parents, school principals, block/district officers, etc., is necessary to successfully implement these changes.
  • Rationale and motivation for any change in Board Policy should be explicitly communicated to all stakeholders impacted by these changes.

Capacity Building of Assessors

Fourth, key stakeholders entrusted with the task of assessment and evaluation must be provided ongoing capacity building on various aspects of assessment.

• Comprehensive assessment guidelines, handbooks and manuals, exemplar assessment tools and processes must be available.
• Teacher capacity for designing, implementing, and using valid and reliable assessments must be strengthened through regular training.
• Teachers, as primary evaluators of the student, require freedom to make independent decisions about teaching-learning and assessment processes based on their individual needs.
  • Support from the school head will enhance the level of motivation of teachers and they will feel more confident using the new approach.
• In addition to teachers, training and capacity building of paper setters, evaluators, and moderators of Board examinations should also be undertaken to enable these improvements.

Recent Steps

• In its efforts to facilitate assessment reforms, CBSE has been making ongoing changes.
  • It has provided training to its teachers on various pedagogic and assessment reforms as suggested in NEP 2020.
  • It has conducted an exhaustive review of its certification examination (Board) papers to evaluate the reliability and validity of the test instruments.
  • In order to support teachers with implementing competency based education, learning standards framework for various subjects at secondary, and senior secondary level have been developed in alignment with the NCERT learning outcomes.
  • To provide equal attention to the growth of learners in all aspects of development, Holistic Progress Cards (HPCs) have been developed.
    • The HPC will form an important link between the home and school
    • It will capture the uniqueness of each learner in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains as opposed to the conventional report cards which measure the achievements of children in quantitative terms, only once in an academic year.
    • The handbooks, guidebooks, and other reference materials have been developed to be used as reference materials for test developers. CBSE has collaborated with various government and not-for-profit institutions in instituting these changes.

Conclusion

• NEP 2020 reiterates key areas of reforms from reports and policies that preceded it. We need to be creative and innovative in our efforts and solutions to transform the way assessments are perceived and used across our country. The continuity of effort towards the envisaged processes and systems must be the basis of all action– creating repositories of best practices will enable consolidation of efforts, as will dialogue and collaborative action across institutions.

Source: Yojana Magazine (February Issue)

Mains Question:

Q. Comment on the conditions of the assessment system in India. Also suggest a suitable way forward.