Experts and teachers have said the new Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system for Class 10 students in the State board schools may not serve its purpose.
Under the new system, introduced from this academic year, students will be assessed on an external examination (for 80 per cent) and internal assessment (for 20 per cent).
Some teachers have objected to two features of the new system — the assessment pattern and the marking criteria. A government school teacher on condition of anonymity said that having 80 per cent weightage on the summative examination (public examination) would continue to burden the students and the emphasis would largely remain on the public examination system. Making marks known to students in the report card unlike only grades and cumulative grade point average (CGPA) as in the Central Board of Secondary Education would continue to put pressure on students to score high marks, the teacher said.
The CCE system was evolved based on the guidelines of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005 and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which states that CCE had to be introduced to make the child free of fear, trauma and anxiety, and help the child express views freely.
According to the NCF 2005 paper on ‘Systemic reforms for curriculum change’, CCE should not only lay down guidelines for marking pattern but also provide space to teachers for creative teaching, provide a tool for diagnosis, and produce learners with greater skills.
V.P. Niranjan Aradhya, fellow at the Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India University, criticised the new model and said that it did not reflect the values of CCE.
‘Unscientific’“The 80:20 system is an unscientific concept and has reduced CCE to another examination mode. The true purpose of CCE to reduce the burden and stress on students is hard to achieve under this model,” he said. It was almost impossible for any teacher to ensure that the true purpose of CCE was achieved as the space for classroom transactions was very limited, he said.
“Teachers are burdened with so many responsibilities. They would be unable to assess the students from time to time unless a suitable environment that is conducive to learning is created,” he said.
Responding to this, Ganesh Bhat, principal, MES Teachers College, Bangalore, and chairman of the Karnataka State Secondary Examination Board-appointed sub-committee of experts that was involved in the preparation of the CCE pattern, said majority of responses received were in the favour of the 80:20 pattern.
“Teachers and parents feel that some subjects are loaded, completing activities and portions will be difficult, and so they favoured the 80:20 concept,” he said, and added that the board was open to improvising the system in the coming years based on the public response received this year.
