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The Central Board of Secondary Education plans to give accreditation to its affiliated institutions on the basis of quality of education. This proposal will set benchmark for quality assurance among the schools in the country. The schools will be evaluated on various parameters like curriculum, quality of faculty, faculty-student ratio, quality of teaching, facilities etc. The school will be weeded out from CBSE system if it fails to get accreditation within a span of 3-5 years.
Accreditation of schools will ensure that the school has met prescribed qualitative standards which have been pre-set by the accrediting agency.
An institution found to be deficient in regard to standards will be given time to take corrective action. Once the time allowed for appeal by an institution of adverse action (i.e, denial of accreditation, placement on probation, termination of accreditation) has elapsed, a public announcement of action will be released.
The CBSE organised The Examination Reforms and Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) training to acquaint principals and teachers about the the reforms and the changes. The training was held at the Global Indian International School,Pimpri from 27 October- 29 October.
The training was conducted by CBSE resource team comprising Anita Wattal, principal, Springdale School, Delhi, and Mukesh Shelat, principal, GIIS, Pune. Principals and teachers from 66 schools across Maharashtra participated in the programme. The plan to implement CCE is a major break through which attempts to raise the status of schools as equal partners of the board.
The training programme played a significant role to disseminate information and the discussions attempted to clear all doubts of educators about the changes.
The government earlier announced of its plans to make Class X boards optional from the next academic year 2010-11. However, Prime Minister said that this issue is still being debated and careful examination needs to be done before finalising any decision of making the exams optional.
“We are still debating on this issue. This is an experiment. We should not take a decision in haste,” Singh told a group of children during an interaction organised by CNN-IBN on Children’s Day.
HRD ministry officials also believe that this move of introduction of grading system is an experiment . “The decision of the state boards to emulate CBSE will depend on the success of the new system that will start only in 2011. The state boards have also said they will see how the CBSE experiment works,” one official said. “
In response to a question raised by one student regarding what efforts the government is taking for the education of children who are living on the roads, he said “It pains me a lot. We are trying to educate all children under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.”
PM recalled his first meet with Jawaharlal Nehru at Punjab University.
“It was a most moving experience for me because he used to talk to anyone who had the courage to walk up to him. It was the life’s wish of many to touch Pandit Nehru’s hand but his security forces would not let that happen.”
In September, Ministry of HRD, endorsing the widespread opinion that class XII exams are important and the class X exams were an unnecessary burden on students, have announced that CBSE class X board exam will become optional from the next academic year (2010-11) while a grading system will be in place from the current year.
However Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has cautioned ministry of HRD not to rush act regarding the reforms in the Board exams. Mr.Singh, in his interactive session with the children on the occasion of Pandit Nehru’s Birthday, said that the reforms are still in the experimental stage and the debate is still on. “We should not take decisions in haste” said Mr.Singh in his answer to a student’s question that this move would shield students from difficulties.
However HRD ministry refused to see these remarks as a repudiation and instead said that “PM is absolutely correct and the ministry itself is working very cautiously regarding the reforms to be made in the Indian Education Sector.”
In its endeavor to reform the Indian education sector, the HRD Ministry is all set to start accrediting the 10,000 CBSE schools from the next academic session. All the schools will be assessed on different parameters that include course curriculum, faculty quality, teacher-student ratio, infrastructure etc; Schools which fail to get accreditation within a 3-5 year window period will be excluded from the CBSE system.
Several schools have already expressed their interest to get accredited by the CBSE board and this accreditation is foreseen to play a very significant role to play in improving the enrolments. In order to carry out the entire process of accreditation, CBSE will soon set up an Expert Advisory Committee to oversee the accreditation process. Besides conducting the research, policies and accreditation procedures, this committee will appoint the accrediting agencies as well. Schools which fail in the process will be given time to take the necessary corrective measures and upon the completion of this time, the schools which are not accredited will be terminated from the CBSE system.
In spite of the Central Board of Secondary Education spending time and money to conduct workshops across the capital, the confusion regarding the new grading system is still riding the minds of the teachers. “Bafflement is characteristic to any change that takes place in an old established system,” felt some of the teachers while the others held an opposing stance saying, ” CBSE needs to put on their thinking caps to evolve a much feasible option than just conducting workshops.”
Demarcating various schools on the basis of their infrastructure, R.K. Sharma, principal of Alcon Public School said that, “The new set of rules cannot work solely upon few elite schools. Those lacking the basic infrastructure for co-scholastic activities have no alternative.”
No guideline for class XI admissions, absence of a concrete scale to grade co-curricular activities, no solution if a child fails to attain the grade to qualify even after the third trial and no direction for conducting online tests to a different school are some of the issues which puzzled Mr. Sharma as he raised them.
HRD minister Kapil Sibal recently asked the CBSE Board to explore the possibility of checking the quality of schools in the country and CBSE has readied a draft note detailing the process to accredit its 10,500 schools across the country, to bring in quality control. The schools will be accredited for 3-5 years, based on various parameters (see box). However, CBSE Board has made it very clear that there will be no ranking of schools, rather, a level of acceptable quality will be established for all accredited institutions, while respecting their unique missions.
According to the Board, the affiliated schools come in contact with the Board at the time of initial affiliation, upgradation or renewal of affiliation. “But after completion, there is hardly any quality check on these schools. The only indicators would be Class 10 and 11 exam results, which were highlighted by schools individually and differently,’’ the note stated.
Interestingly, it is the not the Board that accredits schools. An Expert Advisory Committee (EAC) will be constituted by the Board, which will choose agencies to assess and accredit the schools based on the criteria and fees approved by CBSE. In case a school is not satisfied with its assessment, the Board will only act as an appellate body.
With Board exams being made optional from the academic year 2010-11, a new system of evaluation – Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) – based on grades has been approved. It comprises formative and summative assessment of the student to be done over two terms – first and second -during the year-long academic calendar
Summative Assessment based on the term-end examination
- There will be two evaluations each in the first and second terms.
- Each evaluation will carry 10 marks apiece.
Formative Assessment to evaluate and grade class work, homework, assignment and project work
- There will be one term-end exam for each term.
- The first term-end exam will carry 20 marks.
- The second term-end exam will carry 40 marks.
