Welcome the new evaluation plan
CBSE’s alternative assessment model will end uncertainty. It can also lead to reforms
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), on Thursday, submitted to the Supreme Court (SC) its evaluation criteria for awarding marks to Class 12 students, after the cancellation of the board exams. According to the formula, the results will be decided on the basis of a student’s performance in classes 10 and 11 (each will have 30% weightage) and Class 12, which will have 40% weightage. For classes 10 and 11, marks in the best of three from five papers in term exams will be considered. For Class 12, marks obtained in unit, term and practical examinations will be taken into account. To put all Class 12 students on par, there may be a moderation committee to look into the difference in the marking mechanism adopted by schools. The results will be declared by July 31.
CBSE’s evaluation plan must be welcomed. It may not make all stakeholders and sectoral experts happy — but the perfect cannot be an enemy of good in these times. Holding the board exam would have been a grave public health risk. And so an alternative model was needed, and examining a student’s performance over three years is a good indicator of academic skills. Most importantly, the evaluation formula ends the uncertainty that students have been grappling with for 15 months now, and will allow them to move on. The framework, which can be tweaked and revised if necessary, should now be operationalised.
There is, however, a valuable lesson in the coronavirus pandemic-sparked disruption for the government, school boards and education sector. It is time to undertake long-pending structural reforms in assessment methods. Judging the learning abilities, knowledge base, interests and skills of students on the basis of one exam, and then making that the basis to determine their future, has flaws. Educational panels over the years have pointed to the error in reducing education to rotelearning and reproduction of sterile textbook-based information. This has come at the cost of assessing critical analytical abilities and a student’s understanding of a subject, and ignores heterogeneity among students. The change in the evaluation system may have been a product of unfortunate circumstances, but it should be used as the basis to undertake a review of the evaluation model, especially for those leaving school.