Several schools have been asking teachers to set more analytical questions in internal assessments right from the junior classes.
A Class VI question in geography shows the picture of cacti in a desert and the question is why the plant is growing on that terrain instead of asking the students to list the climactic conditions favourable for the growth of cacti.
Similarly, in a science paper, a picture shows a weighing scale with an inflated balloon in one and a deflated one in another. The student by seeing the tilt of the scale has to name and explain the principle of “weight of air”.
The Central Board of Secondary Education( CBSE) has been increasing the percentage of competency-based questions in board exams (X and XII) by 10 per cent every year.
Principals of several schools said that students would have to be prepared for it rather than be introduced to it at the board level.
In 2024, the Class X CBSE exams will have 50 per cent competency-based questions and Class XII 40 per cent, as against 40 per cent and 30 per cent in 2023.
Competency-focused learning is an attempt to shift from rote learning to application-based and experiential learning, said teachers.
“These are best educational practices and when the board decides, it becomes the responsibility of the school to train and prepare children from an early age. With the board specifying the percentage of such questions in the board paper, it also creates more acceptability among parents. Else there is a tendency among a section of them to term such questions as ‘out of syllabus’,” said Amita Prasad, director of Indus Valley World School.
Last week, the director of academics of the CBSE told school principals to stress on competency-focused education.
Some schools said they were trying to introduce changes in the internalassessments, projectsand teaching-learning methods.
“Competency-based questions mean a question would be asked indirectly to a student for which the student has to be thorough with the content. The reality is that question papers are changing and schools have to find ways and means to keep pace from the start,” said Alok Tibrewal, pro-vice chairman, Delhi Public School Ruby Park.
“If teachers do not follow this methodology, it would be a setback for our students,” he said.
Some schools said they were bringing the changes from as early as Class III. Some from Class V onwards.
“It is a skill that you instil right from the beginning,” said Anjana Saha, principal, Mahadevi Birla World Academy.
Loveleen Saigal, principal, Birla High School, spoke of training “that requires students to think, apply their knowledge and then answer”.
The challenge is to train teachers to break away from the traditional pattern, who despite being competent, are habituated to setting a certain kind of question paper that they have been doing for many years.
“There are experienced and competent teachers but for many years they have been used to a certain pattern and now they have to break free from that pattern,” said Prasad.
Teachers also insist that analytical questions do not mean that memorising can be discarded completely.
“Students have to memorise with understanding,” a history teacher said.
