Evaluating student during pandemic
What procedure's could board across the country use for the evaluation of the students post the recent decision on cancellation of examination?
Covid -19 has already created lots of disruption in all the industry and education has hit the hardest of all. With the recent massive surge in cases Central Government has decided to cancel the CBSE examination for Class X and have postponed the Class XII examination which was supposed to commence from 4th of May. Similarly, other boards like ICSE and ISC too have followed the suit, to be reviewed during the first week of June.
The present scenario brings us to the only solutions available to assess the student by Formative Assessment as pen and pencil examination cannot be held. Now, what does Formative Assessment mean?
Formative Assessment is usage of various methods to conduct evaluation of students learning needs, academic progress during the course, chapter or instructions, it helps teachers to identify if the students have understood the concept, acquired the skills, or are they facing difficulties in acquiring and learning, this helps them to improve upon their methodologies. On the other hand Summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an course, term or instructions, those like mid term examination, the final project etc.
As put by assessment expert – Paul Black – he say’s - When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment, & When the customer tastes the soup it is a summative assessment.
Normally all the schools across the board conduct summative assessment which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, and had to adopt on the continuous evaluation process. As per the laid down process of UNESCO the aspects on which this pattern is based are Observation, Quizzes Assignments and Feedbacks, to put it in perspective- Summative assessment is more of “Testing of Learning” and Formative assessment is “Testing for Learning”, this helps the teacher to understand the strength and weakness of the students leading them to ascertain remedial measure to improve up on the weakness identified.
CBSE Board had in the year 2009-10 introduced CCE framework (Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation) though, it was discarded in the favor of public examination. However, the year 2020-21 has brought in lots of disruption to the routine learning process with the use of Online teaching and learning, lots of teacher adopted video platforms to deliver lectures and assess students, so its becomes imperative that the boards too should structure with clear measures.
Schools are of the view that since they have been teaching online and understanding the learning process with their students, they kept on conducting internal examinations, practical’s test series and pre board examination to check on the preparedness of Class X students, the results of which will help them evaluate the students.
Then it leads to a bigger question on the capabilities of all the schools to conduct sound formative assessments considering the facilities all of them possess. The challenge would be with the state board schools, and their students, a sample survey by National Sample Survey shows that merely 4% of rural household and about 23% of the urban household had computers, while the internet access was at 15% for the former and the later. Hence with such penetration would it be feasible?
The solution? With the aim to enhance the critical thinking and analytical capabilities for competency-based learning, CBSE launched competency-based assessment plans aligned with the NEP 2020 jointly with British Council for Science, Mathematics and English Language, even the NEP of 1986 had more emphasis on CCE structure of learning and had lesser emphasize on rote learning. The NEP 2020 as is emphasizing more on formative assessments for learning and condemn existing pattern of examination which leads to lesser content learning. Thus, for the future of learning and assessment it should be education assessable to every student be it physical classroom or online learning, and extensive usage of formative assessment designed scientifically and graded accordingly.