The changes in curriculum described in Section 4.2-Section 4.8 must be
accompanied by parallel changes in assessment procedures and
mechanisms.
The very aim of assessment in the culture of our schooling system
must shift
from one that primarily tests rote memorisation skills to one that
is more
formative, promotes learning and development for our students, and
tests
higher-order skills such as analysis, critical thinking, and
conceptual clarity. The
primary purpose of assessment should indeed be for learning - it
should help
the teacher and student - and the entire schooling system -
continuously revise
teaching-learning processes in order to optimise learning and
development for
all students.
The approach must be to focus on formative and developmental
assessment
throughout the school years. Learning assessment must shift towards
testing
only the understanding of core concepts and knowledge, along with
higher-order
capacities such as critical thinking, analysis, and application;
this
approach must be used throughout the educational system and
throughout
all subjects, including on school examinations, Board
Examinations, entrance
examinations for universities, university examinations, and
examinations for
employment.
Unfortunately, the current nature of examinations - and the
resulting coaching
culture of today - are doing much harm, especially at the
secondary school
level, replacing valuable time for true learning with excessive
examination
coaching and preparation.
While the rigour of and the importance placed upon the Grade 10
and 12 Board
Examinations do force students to study, and have been important
resources
with which to assess students for university admissions and
employment, the
current structure of the Board Examinations have also
systematically prevented
optimal learning from taking place in a number of ways:
• First and foremost, the Grade 10 and 12 Board Examinations place
an
enormous amount of pressure on students over just a few days of
their
lives. The harmful coaching culture results from the fact that
students’
lives depend so heavily on their performance over these few days,
that all
other considerations in a students’ life become secondary. In
particular, real
understanding, thinking, analysing, doing, and learning takes a
secondary
seat to mugging, rote learning, and obtaining coaching for
performing on
these life-altering examinations.
• Second, the current structure of Board Examinations force
students to
concentrate only on a few subjects at the expense of others,
preventing a
truly holistic development. Specialisation is forced upon students
early on,
and an unnatural and early streaming and partitioning of students
into
science, arts, or commerce is the result. The desired flexibility
for students
to choose a wide range of courses across fields throughout
secondary school
and beyond is prevented by such early specialisation. Moreover,
when
certain necessary areas, such as sciences, mathematics, arts,
humanities,
languages, and vocational skills are simply not assessed at all
for some
students, depending on their specialisations, such students simply
never
learn those areas well, as there is little incentive for them to
do so. For
example, science students in the country rarely study the arts,
vocational
subjects, or sports after grade 8, and vice versa, due to the
nature of these
all-important examinations, and this strongly prevents students
from
learning in the desired multidisciplinary manner in accordance
with
their interests.
• Third, if life-determining Board Examinations are given on only
two occasions, in Grade 10 and 12, then it is inevitable that
these
examinations will be mostly summative and not formative, which is
a
wasted opportunity. Examinations should also be learning
experiences,
from which one can learn and improve in the future; the current
Board
Examination system does not line up with these goals.
These various negative effects of the current Board Examination
system
are also seen in the current university entrance examination system
- in
particular, there is a corresponding harmful coaching culture and
further
incentives for early specialisation and rote learning. To make
matters
worse, many universities give their own entrance examinations
despite
offering similar programmes, rendering 12th Grade for many
students as
a year of mugging and obtaining coaching for various different
entrance
examinations, rather than actually learning in school and pursuing
their
individual talents. Students often have to travel across the
country for taking
these examinations to enter select institutes.
Furthermore, many of these examinations happen only on one given
day
during the year - if a student misses a test, he/she has to wait a
full year to try
again. The financial load of taking multiple examinations with inflexibility
in terms of timing, location, and content represents a tremendous
burden on
students. Entrance to postgraduate programmes suffers from similar
issues.
In order to break these harmful effects of Board and entrance
examinations
during secondary school, it is necessary that Board and entrance
examinations be restructured to encourage holistic development, flexible
and individualised curricula, and formative assessment. For these
aims, the
solution that emerges is that:
• Board Examinations should be given in a range of subjects to
encourage
holistic development;
• Students should be able to choose many of the subjects in which
they
take Board Examinations, depending on their individualised
interests;
• Board Examinations must also be made “easier”, in the sense that
they
test primarily core capacities rather than months of coaching and
memorisation; any student who has been going to and making a basic
effort in a school class should be able to pass the corresponding
subject
Board Examination without much additional effort;
• Students should be able to take a Board examination in a given
subject
in whichever semester they take the corresponding class in school,
i.e.,
whenever they feel most ready; and they should be able to take any
such
subject Board Examination again if they feel they can study and do
better.
• Board Examinations in each subject may replace the in-school final
examinations for semester or year-long courses, whenever possible,
so as
not to increase the examination load on students.
Such a system is used by many countries, where coaching cultures
for Board
Examinations have not developed due to their structure.
The principles for university entrance examinations must be
similar; the
National Testing Agency (NTA) (see P4.9.6) will work to offer high
quality
common modular entrance examinations multiple times each year in
various
subjects, from logic, quantitative reasoning, and languages, to
more specialised
subject examinations in the sciences, arts, and vocational
subjects, so that most
universities may use these common entrance examinations, rather
than having
hundreds of universities devising their own examinations - thereby
reducing
the burden on both students and universities and colleges. The
advantage of
such a system is that students will be able to choose the range of
subjects that
they are interested in, and each university will be able to see
each student’s
individual subject portfolio, and admit students into their
programmes based
on individual interests and talents.
It is thus of high importance that the NTA serve as a premiere,
expert,
autonomous testing organisation to conduct entrance examinations
for
admissions and fellowships in higher educational institutions. The
NTA will
be entrusted with the responsibility of assessing competence at
scale in an
efficient, transparent, and rigorous manner, using state-of-the-art
methods
in test preparation, test delivery, and test analysis. It will use
the best subject
experts, psychometricians, and IT-delivery and security
professionals to ensure
high quality assessment across the board.
Finally, all examinations such as Board and entrance examinations
will not
be as “high stakes”, by allowing students best of multiple (i.e.,
at least two)
attempts.
P4.9.1. A
new paradigm of assessment for learning and development: Guidelines
will be prepared by NCERT, and teachers prepared, for a
transformation in the
assessment system by 2022, to align with the NCF 2020. The focus
will be on
formative assessment, i.e., assessment for learning.
In this transformation, assessment will be redesigned to primarily
test core
concepts and skills along with higher order capacities such as
critical thinking,
analysis, and conceptual clarity rather than rote memorisation.
This approach
will be used across all examinations - from schools to “entrance
examinations”
to National or State-level achievement surveys to university
examinations
and examinations for employment. Examinations will not be as “high-stakes”
- the psychological burden on students will be significantly
reduced through
mechanisms such as best of multiple attempts.
P4.9.2. Formative
assessment to continually improve teaching-learning
processes: At the school level, such developmental assessment of learning
will be carried out periodically, and at least once a month, in
all domains, to
help both teachers and students continuously reassess and optimise
learning
plans. Over time, online question banks of higher order questions
will be
made available to teachers and students for this purpose. Since
assessment
will be formative and will test primarily higher order skills and
applications
of essential concepts, open book examinations may be used as well,
and
portfolios may be used in the Secondary Stage.
Teachers will prepare their own quizzes, examinations, and
portfolio
assessments in this spirit to track students’ progress and revise
personalised
lesson plans accordingly for each student as needed.
These quizzes, examinations, and portfolios will also help
teachers identify
students who may make excellent candidates for participation in
local
subject-specific clubs and circles, who may make for excellent peer
tutors
in given subjects, and who may benefit from, e.g. the NTP and RIAP
programmes in given subjects.
The culture of assessment must shift
from one that primarily tests rote
memorisation to one that is more
formative, promotes learning, and tests
higher-order skills.
|
P4.9.3. Piloting
adaptive computerised testing: Once internet and computers are
standard in schools, assessment at all levels - especially during
the Middle
and Secondary stages - may also be conducted in an adaptive
computer-assisted
manner, so that students could regularly monitor their own
progress
and formulate, with the help of their teachers, revised
personalised learning
plans and goals. Formal official assessments, such as Board and
entrance
examinations, could eventually be conducted in this manner also,
with
students thereby being easily able to take such tests on more than
one or
two occasions to improve.
P4.9.4. Census
examinations in Grades 3, 5, and 8: To track students’ progress
throughout their school experience, and not just at the end in
Grade
10 and 12 - for the benefit of students, parents, teachers,
principals, and
school management committees in planning improvements to schools
and
teaching-learning processes - all students will take State census
examinations
in Grades 3, 5, and 8 in addition to the Board Examinations in
Grades 10 and 12. Again, these examinations would test core concepts and
knowledge from
the national and local curricula, along with relevant higher order
skills gained
during the respective levels of education, rather than rote
memorisation. The
Grade 3 census examination, in particular, would test basic
literacy, numeracy,
and other foundational skills.
P4.9.5.
Restructuring of Board
Examinations: Board Examinations will be significantly
restructured to test only core concepts, skills, and higher order
capacities in
a range of required subjects and a range of elective subjects of
the student’s
choice. The goal will be to be flexible, like the curriculum, and
to design the
Board Examinations so that any student attending classes in their
chosen
subjects and making basic efforts in these classes will be able to
comfortably
pass their Board Examinations - without any necessity for
coaching, cramming,
or other major outside-of-usual-schoolwork efforts. Board
Examinations will
thus be used as a check for basic learning, skills, and analysis.
To eliminate the
“high stakes” aspect of Board Examinations, all students will be
allowed to take
Board Examinations on up to two occasions during any given school
year.
Eventually, when computerised adaptive testing becomes widely
available,
multiple attempts for Board Examinations could be allowed.
To achieve such flexibility, reduce stress, lessen the examination
burden on
students by replacing in-class final examinations with Board
Examinations,
and allowing students to take the Board Examination in each
subject at the end
of the semester in which they take that subject, the Policy
envisions shifting, as
soon as is possible, to a “modular Board Examinations” approach,
where Board
examinations are offered each semester in a range of subjects.
As a suggested model, each student over the duration of secondary
school would
be required to take at least two semester Board Examinations in
mathematics,
two in science, one in Indian history, one in world history, one
in knowledge
of contemporary India, one in ethics and philosophy, one in
economics, one
in business/commerce, one in digital literacy / computational
thinking, one in
art, one in physical education, and two in vocational subjects. In
addition, each
student would be required to take three basic language Board
Examinations
that assess basic proficiency in the three-language formula, and at
least one
additional Board Examination in a language of India at the
literature level.
Additional Board Examinations in various other subjects, including
more
advanced subjects in mathematics, statistics, science, computer
programming,
history, art, language, and vocational subjects, will be
available. Students
will be expected to take a total of at least 24 subject Board
Examinations, or
on average three a semester, and these examinations would be in
lieu of in-school
final examinations so as not to be any additional burden on
students or
teachers. Practical portions of certain Board Examinations would
be assessed
locally according to a pre-set State paradigm, and grades for the
written and
practical portions would be listed separately on a student’s
assessment report.
Recall that students will be taking 40+ semester courses during
secondary
school, so 15 or more semester courses could be decided completely
locally by
the student and assessed locally by the school, including subjects
that would
traditionally have been considered co-curricular or
extra-curricular.
P4.9.6.
National Testing Agency
strengthened to conduct college and university
entrance examinations: The autonomous NTA will comprise of numerous
academic, educational, and psychometric experts, and from 2020
onwards
will administer aptitude tests and tests in specific subjects that
can be taken
on multiple occasions during the year in order to reduce the
intense and
unnecessary pressures of the university entrance examinations
system. The
NTA tests will aim to assess essential concepts, knowledge, and
higher order
skills from the national common curriculum as per the NCF in each
subject,
for the purpose of aiding colleges and universities in their
admissions
decisions.
While admissions to institutions of higher learning will be based
on criteria
that higher educational institutions choose to set, most
educational
institutions and many employers will be encouraged to use these
NTA tests
rather than their own examinations to ease the burden on students
and
on themselves. This will help to eliminate the intensity,
stressfulness, and
wasted time of the Grade 12 examination season faced by students
every
year as well as by so many higher educational institutions and
employers.
The NTA will institute processes which would ease admissions into
higher
education programmes (e.g. directly sending scores to the
institution). It
could also institute processes which would connect it directly to
the bodies
offering scholarships to students.
The NTA will establish test centres across the country and have
rigorous
processes to enable their effective functioning. Tests will be
offered in
as many languages as possible. In the long run, tests will be
offered in all
mediums of instruction offered by higher education institutions
(HEIs) in
the country, and the NTA will institute processes for reliable
translations
of test material into multiple languages. The preferred modality
will be
computer-based testing (with the exception of assessment of
practical skills),
e.g. at ICT-equipped adult-education centres and schools; where
this is not
possible, paper-pencil tests will be used till such time the
transition can be
made.
The NTA will develop strategies for ensuring validity and
reliability of its
assessments, and to create credibility of its tests for admissions
to universities
and colleges across India as well as other countries. The NTA may
also
partner with institutions in the country and across the world to
build up
its capability. It will work in close collaboration with school
systems, HEIs,
Professional Standard Setting Bodies (PSSBs) (See P18.3.1) and all other
relevant institutions in the education system. It may constitute
an Advisory
Board with representatives from such institutions which would
ensure that
its work remains relevant and forward-looking.
Due to its large-scale work, the NTA may also serve as a
storehouse for
assessment data in the country, which it may use and make
available to
external academics for educational research purposes and to
policymakers
within appropriate ethical considerations. Through assessment,
data
collection, and other initiatives towards research and
assessment-literacy
among all stakeholders, and building of capacity for formative
assessment,
the NTA will be committed to improving education quality and
access across
the
country.
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