Evaluation should be continuous and aid students’ learning, development: Minister

Evaluation should be continuous and aid students’ learning and development, Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty has said.

Responding to a calling attention motion by M. Vijin, Kalliassery MLA, on assessment reforms for improvement of quality of school education, the Minister said the General Education department was focussing on improvement of academic standards. At this stage, there was need to implement assessment reforms as the current one had been in place since 2005. Both term-end examinations and continuous evaluation practices needed to be tweaked.

The Minister pointed out that the State had not performed as well as it did usually in some surveys on school education. In the Performance Grading Index brought out by the Union government, the State had come out on top but there were some shortcomings in the area of learning achievements.

Some problems were also seen in the results of the National Achievement Survey held in 2021 in language, Mathematics, Science, and Social Science for classes III, V, and VIII, and X, especially Class X Mathematics. The 2023 State Achievement Survey highlighted the need to pay attention to Mathematics and language for classes III, V, and VIII.

On the issue of minimum marks, he said that various exam boards in the country followed different practices for class X and XII evaluation. In CBSE, 33% minimum marks were necessary. In Tamil Nadu, 33% marks for both theory and practical individually in each subject were required and in Karnataka it was 35% for each subject.

Assessment, the Minister said, should be able to take into account all abilities of students. More focus should be on assessment of learning. It should be able to foster 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking and conceptual clarity, analysis, and communication.

Only if assessment in place was able to ensure that all students were able to meet learning achievements could it be called transparent and comprehensive. He also called on teachers to understand the assessment framework and implement teaching-learning activities accordingly.