september 5, 2015

Back to the FailPass System?

The call to rescind the no-detention and continuous evaluation policies in schools is misguided.

he no-detention policy (NDP) and the provision for continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) under the Right
to Education (RTE) Act have both led to criticism as well as
approval from educationists and parents, with the fault-finders
dominating the discourse. This led to a subcommittee of the Central
Advisory Board of Education (CABE) being set up in 2012 to look
into how the CCE had been doing. Its report, received in July 2014,
throws its weight behind the naysayers, calling for examination to
assess learning-level outcomes and for the reintroduction of
detention for low achievers. The central government has pointed
to a number of states wanting the NDP to be abolished and to the
CABEs unanimous agreement with this demand. This implies
that the promotion of school students up to Class VIII, irrespective of their academic results, may now be stopped.
The National Curriculum Framework 2005, which itself was
based on the much earlier Learning without Burden report, had
recommended that the assessment system needed fundamental
changes. The traditional end-of-the-year exam equated a strong
memory with learning, discounting comprehension and understanding. The CCE, in response, aimed at assessing the childs understanding of what was being taught in class at periodic intervals.
But there is no law, unfortunately, that decrees that wellintentioned policies should lead to good consequences. The Indian
school system is a Byzantine one, compounded by the disparate
socio-economic situation of its students as well as the endemic
shortcomings in infrastructure and resources, including pedagogic.
The NDP was being followed in various states and up to different
classes even before the RTE came into force. However, not many
parents were enamoured of it. The traditional exam and report
card gave them an estimate of their childs performance and
thus a sense of whether or not the child was progressing. Its
absence led to uncomfortable ambiguity. Now, the learning outcomes have declined according to the National Survey report,
especially in rural government schools. Sadly, a policy meant to
ensure that the student did not feel demotivated and leave the
school altogether has been so badly mauled in its implementation that it is now in danger of being thrown out.
As a number of educationists and teachers have pointed out, the
NDP was wrongly assumed to mean that there was no need for
assessment of any kind or that assessments really had no significance. The CCE implementation has had even more problems. For
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

september 5, 2015

vol l no 36

starters, the already overloaded teachers had little to no training

to undertake this massive reform; where training was present, it
was reported to be unhelpful. There were different interpretations
of CCE and therefore the means of implementation too varied. The
paperwork and administrative tasks required of teachers increased, while parents now had to participate in the childrens
project work, leading to parental resentment. Most Indian parents
find themselves more comfortable with exams at the end of each
term which pressurises the child to study. The NDP was seen
as giving children too much latitude while the CCE only seemed
to drive the teachers to breaking point. In short, given the way
the two were implemented there seemed to be no winners.
The central point in this debate should be, will detaining
children whose academic results are considered poor help them
to do better academically and not drop out of school? How will
simply repeating a class in the same learning/teaching environment help the child? Again, if the CCE is seen as burdensome by
teachers, there should be consistent attempts to clarify this concept
to them and help them improve the teacherstudent relationship.
What also needs to be considered is that the other provisions in
the RTE regarding the amenities, teacherstudent ratio, facilities
that enhance learning, etc, cannot happen overnight. The issue
of teacher-training and qualification is an extremely fraught
one that needs sharper policy focus and more creative solutions.
The NDP and the CCE cannot have satisfactory results in an
inadequate environment, as the past few years have shown. It is
only fair then to evaluate these two important ideas only after
their implementation is fine-tuned to address these issues. It
would be hasty to assume that NDP and CCE are solely responsible for the low learning outcome levels of recent years.
There is now sufficient evidence to suggest that the end-ofterm-exam system leads to tremendous strain and stress on students, and the emphasis on marks is at the cost of the students
all-round development. It also skews the playing field in favour
of the privileged who can afford teaching aids outside the
school and help their children memorise by rote.
The government has announced plans for an all-India consultation on the new education policy soon and wants to bring out the
first draft report by the end of this year. Notwithstanding the clamour of many states and the CABE subcommittees report, if the NDP
and the CCE are repealed, what exactly will the schools go back to?
7