The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has become the first school board to develop a self-assessment protocol for its affiliated schools.
The national board wants its over 29,000 affiliated schools to undertake the self-assessment on the School Quality Assessment and Assurance (SQAA) portal for the year 2024 between April 1 and December 31.
The National Education Policy (NEP) prescribed the self-assessment of schools for quality interventions.
According to the guidelines, there are seven domains in which the schools have to submit their information on the SQAA portal. The domain areas are curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; infrastructure; functionality and aesthetics; human resources; inclusive practices; management and governance; leadership and beneficiary satisfaction.
While CBSE wants all its schools to take part in this exercise, it has made it mandatory for schools which will be applying for fresh affiliation or an extension of affiliation or an upgradation from Class X to Class XII. The schools will get a score between one and four based on the information provided by them. The self-assessment is valid for a year.
It was initiated as a pilot project last year.
The schools have to upload supporting documents for the information provided by them in each domain.
Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment have been given 40 weightage points, while the other six parameters have been given 10 weightage points each.
Sudha Acharya, principal of ITL Public School and president of the National Progressive Schools’ Conference (NPSC), said that the school would provide a self-assessment score in each domain, which would serve as an alert.
“The school while giving self-score knows where it stands in a particular domain. In our case, we set up committees to suggest improvements in the areas where we have given a low self-score,” Acharya said.
She said that the CBSE sent its officials to verify the information by visiting the schools.
An education ministry official said that the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration had developed standards for self-evaluation of government schools in the states. However, the implementation needs improvement.
