Come April and the season of examinations — both internal and otherwise — sets in. Be it the semester-end exam where students are supposed to exhibit everything they have learnt in the past few months or the year-end exam that determines whether they move to the next grade and whether they do so with confidence and dignity or a warning and low self-esteem.
Examinations have become the mainstay of assessments for the longest time. What this results in is known well — high levels of anxiety among students and parents, and immense pressure on teachers to ensure good results thus precipitating an overall environment of fear.
There’s fear of whether students can display a grasp of all concepts they have been taught. Fear of whether the results will be adequate to proceed to the next grade. Fear of what kind of label will be attached to the student — topper, high-scorer, mediocre or failure. And a greater fear of whether students are able to prove that the education system is working well enough.
There have been attempts to reform this high-stakes examination system multiple times, through the introduction of the grade system, CBSE’s Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), and weightage given to formative assessments along with summatives. Nonetheless, the environment around assessments in many respects remains unchanged.
This largely stems from how assessment is viewed, which is a result of how assessment is placed in the overall learning process. It is often seen as the culmination of what has been learnt (or what hasn’t). It is seldom viewed as part of the learning process. A part that helps not just the student understand what has been learnt well and where more focus is needed, but also helps the teacher and the system gauge what’s working and what requires more attention.
This shift in how assessments are perceived will take effect when we begin to use them differently, as educators, as parents and as an education ecosystem.
There have been conversations around freedom from assessments in popular discourse as well as in research. Arguing against standardised assessments, there have been scenarios wherein classrooms have moved towards being “gradeless”. However, some form of assessing student learning is embedded in these models too. Often, this has entailed focussing on observations, feedback, peer and self-evaluation rather than pen and paper tests. This is seen as an increase in not just the autonomy of teachers but also that of students thereby making them “active” contributors to the assessment process.
Such alternatives also acknowledge that some version of evaluating student learning is valuable.
Formative assessments are currently designed more as miniature versions of summatives. In most cases, these are worksheets that have a set of questions for the student to answer. In some cases, these are in the form of projects or oral tests. But whether these “formatives” lead to any change in teaching design or course correction on the part of the teacher is a grey area. More often than not, they serve the purpose of adding a small weightage to the student’s semester-end or year-end grade. A mechanism of forward linkages post conducting formative assessment must be in place.
The end-of-semester or year-end exams too have immense unlocked potential: first, giving the system a sense of what is working and what is not and help in evidence-based decision-making and planning.
To address this, robust systems of analysing assessment data and innovations in indices beyond subject-wise learning outcomes may be useful. Second, the current assessment practice does not give students a chance to gauge their skills and aptitude. Both in the design of assessment items and report cards, the focus is predominantly on subject knowledge. In alignment to the National Education Policy 2020, the transition towards competency-based assessments and holistic progress cards seems to be a step in the right direction.
It will, however, be critical that the reforms do not
merely repackage the existing system of assessments. For the environment around assessments to change, systematic engagement with each of these stakeholders would be needed.
Shifting the mindset from either fear of or freedom from assessments, it may be prudent to work towards a system in which assessments are intertwined with other aspects of the teaching-learning process and contribute to improving it.
Jha is an education consultant. She has been a teacher and teacher educator.
