Revisiting exams post Covid

In view of the Covid crisis, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has cancelled the Class 10 board exams and instead will go with an 'objective criterion' to evaluate students.

This is the first-of-its-kind initiative to be implemented by the CBSE in around 21,000 schools across India.

In the conventional system of Class 10 evaluation, 20% weightage was on internal assessments and 80% on external written exam which was of high stakes nature.

But in the current form of evaluation, CBSE brings down the load of external examination and emphasises on school-based assessment. While 20 marks of the total 100 will continue to come from internal assessments, the 80-marks written exam component has been redefined as it will not be possible to conduct written exams given the Covid circumstances.

As per the existing policy, internal assessment will be based on a combination of periodic tests (5 marks), multiple assessments (5 marks), portfolio (5 marks) and subject enrichment activities (5 marks).

For the remaining 80 marks, CBSE has entrusted schools to aggregate marks based on a clearly defined common criteria. This will include 50% weightage on pre-board exams and another 50% weightage on periodic tests and mid-term examination.

In addition to this, a robust process of moderation has been introduced to ensure standardisation in students' performance for a school with reference to previous year's performances.

Although developed as a temporary arrangement, the objective criterion proposed by the CBSE has the potential to develop into a balanced year-long assessment programme that is uniform yet more flexible and participative in nature.

By entrusting more responsibility on schools, it opens up possibilities to base the certification on multiple modes of assessments rather than one written examination becoming the major deciding factor.

Skill-based assessment

For many boards like the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) and International Baccalaureate (IB), certification assessment is not limited to conventional written exams. A variety of tests like oral work in languages, fieldwork in geography, laboratory work in sciences, investigations in mathematics and artistic performances are used. In such an evaluation system, the focus is more on assessing the attainment of subject-specific skills.

While CBSE also lays stress on outcome-driven and skill-based assessments, a larger emphasis, until now, had been on a one-time written examination. This had also invited criticisms regarding the tendency of teaching to test and rote learning among students.

However, this does not mean that written examinations are completely futile in nature. Certification examinations across the world including educationally progressive countries such as Finland have a significant written examination component. This ensures a fair and uniform way to understand achievement of prescribed learning outcomes by students at a national-level. Yet, the weightage assigned to such written assessments is what requires rethinking.

Way forward

Building on the objective criterion and exploring a certification assessment programme with a more balanced weightage on written and internal examinations might be the way forward. This will help in bringing down anxiety-level associated with exams among students, teachers and parents.

It will also provide a scope to reflect individual capacities of a student through multiple modes of assessments such as portfolios, project work, written and oral assignments. Further, the written examinations with lesser weightage could serve as an additional data point to ensure valid and reliable evaluations.

The future of this pandemic or any other such event that might paralyse known ways of life is quite uncertain. In such a context, rethinking our secondary school leaving examination system as less dependent on a single written examination and more based on student learning and performance throughout the year becomes critical.

(The authors are faculty at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru)