CCE In Schools -Why It Needs To Be Done Away With !!

The Central Advisory Board of Education will be meeting today to discuss the following points

1.Whether the CCE (Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation ), should be scrapped in the 9^th and 10^th Classes , and whether the  Board Exams should  be reintroduced again .

2.Whether to do away with the “No DetentionPolicy”  in schools

3.Whether to extend the 25 percent reservations for the economically weaker sections to pre primary and secondary classes .

My views on the CCE have been very clear from the beginning. It’s a no nothing policy and leads to a huge amount of file work .The teacher is reduced to a clerk ,maintaining mark lists and grades of very complicated “tools” for Formative Tests as well as maintaining registers and computer records for Summative Exams .I have always felt and argued that in the education system ,teaching must form the bulk of the process –rather than the assessments.In one school which I headed ,I noticed that out of 180 teaching days -65 days were reserved for assessments !! (they had 5 exams in a year !!).I immediately reduced it to 3 ,thus giving the teachers 26 days more for teaching .The results in the board exams showed a phenenmonal increase –from a average aggregate of 75 it jumped to 82 .!!There was no magic involved –just a bit of commonsense .I just placed the horse ahead of the cart and not the other way around .

The CCE similarly bogs the teachers in a huge pile of records .Come on –let them teach .Dont convert them into babus .Apart from that ,the CCE IN THE 10^TH GRADE has spawned a culture of manipulation .Since all the assessments and evaluation  are  “inhouse” and since some tools of assessments ( for example speaking ,projects etc) ,are subjectively judged and no tangible criterion are there ,schools fall into a trap !! They aim to give lots of marks to kids and try to compete with other schools  on the basis of how many kids get a CGPA OF 10 .Sometimes out of 200 kids -180 get CGPA of 10 !!!.One Principal went on Facebook and pasted a photograph showing herself eating  a rasmalai at a legendary sweet house and commenting “ Enjoying ras malai in celebration of 90 percent of children getting a score of 10 CGPA” . Congratulations and “likes”  were splashed all over . Very good !! The tragedy struck 2 years later when the same kids were assessed by the CBSE -5 of the kids with 10 CGPA got  compartments, a nd 3 failed .Obviously they were not the 10 CGPA types but had to be allotted Science and Maths because “technically” they were brilliant!! .

This twin cancer of too much assessment and manipulation ,must be done away with .Otherwise ,we are looking down at the barrel of the gun .

I am also not a great fan of the “no detention” case .I think children have differentiated learning patterns and  even after extra  efforts if a child is not able to cope with the curriculum –he must be given the “privilege” to repeat the class .It can only do him good .

As far as extending the reservations of seats (25 percent ), I feel very strongly that that’s not the job of the private schools .The government must do its job of running the government schools much better .There is no reason why it cant –the teachers and Principals are paid better than the private school teachers and Principal ,the government has lots of avenues to raise finances (private schools can only do so by raising the fees), we pay taxes for these services –so where is the problem ? Now don’t tell me that the government compensates the private schools by giving them “ vouchers”  for the education of these 25 percent kids .I am in it , and I know how much schools get –PEANUTS !!Only monkeys can live on peanuts !!