CBSE evaluation policy forced by COVID-19, but some aspects may be retained: Official

NEW DELHI: Officials at the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) said that the board may retain some aspects of the CBSE evaluation policy 2021-22 for subsequent academic years also.

However, the board officials said that this year’s policy was made specific to the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and that retaining reforms for future years would be based on the responses received from schools.

Some of the changes in the evaluation policy announced by CBSE this year had elements that were proposed in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 released last year. Similar to the new CBSE evaluation pattern, the NEP also suggests reducing curriculum to core essentials, continuous adaptive and formative assessment and reformation of board exams so that they can be conducted multiple times in a year.

CBSE officials said that they have tried to align the current evaluation pattern with the NEP 2020 but are yet to take a decision on implementing it in the subsequent year.

“We are trying to align the policy with the NEP. However, this scheme was released because of the pandemic. We will see what the response is and we can even take feedback from the schools and then think about introducing it long term,” said Joseph Emmanuel, director of academics, CBSE.

Officials said that work is going on related to the reforms specified in the NEP 2020, however, a final decision can only be made after the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) finalises the new curriculum framework.

“We are working parallely on all the schemes mentioned in the NEP 2020, like assessment reforms . Once NCERT comes up with NCF we will think about it. Otherwise the scheme we launched now is seen as a good scheme to reduce the stress of students,” Emmaneul said.

The NCERT had called a meeting with education directors of different states in the last week of June to discuss framing the new national curriculum framework. The new framework will serve as a guide to designing textbooks and teaching.

However, education officials from certain states had expressed their disapproval of the process followed to frame the new curriculum framework.

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