Kerala state sees red in Centre’s uniform assessment mechanism in schools
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Centre’s move to set up a new regulator PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), to come up with uniform norms, standards and guidelines for student assessment and evaluation for all recognised school boards in the country, has met with opposition from the state.
The state believes PARAKH, that is an offshoot of the National Education Policy 2020, would be detrimental to the unique concepts followed in its general education sector. The state had earlier opposed moves aimed at ‘centralisation’ of school education as it suspects ‘non-academic’ interests behind it.
“In a country where there are geographic, ecological, linguistic, cultural, climatic and culinary diversities, using a uniform yardstick to assess students in a centralised manner is unscientific,” General Education Minister V Sivankutty said. He cautioned that adopting such an uniform assessment mechanism would alienate a large section of students from the mainstream.
According to reports, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has held meetings with state education boards to draw up a “benchmark framework” to evolve uniformity in assessment. This, after the realisation that standardisation of benchmarks was necessary as states follow different standards of evaluation, leading to disparity in marks.
PARAKH would reportedly oversee the standardisation process by conducting periodic tests such as the National Achievement Survey (NAS) and State Achievement Survey. The Union Education Ministry tentatively intends to conduct the first NAS next year.
However, officials of the State Council For Educational Research and Training (SCERT) are of the view that only a de-centralised mode of evaluation is ideal in schools. “According to modern concepts, the primary aim of education is to link the knowledge acquired by mankind into a student’s living environment.
Only a teacher can truly assess his or her strengths and weaknesses through continuous classroom evaluation,” the official said.
Meanwhile, Sivankutty also cautioned that centralisation of evaluation would pave way for long term setbacks in the school education sector. He hoped that ideas propounded by modern and progressive streams of education would be imbibed at the national level to ensure quality of education for all sections of students.