Education ministry and PARAKH organise first national level workshop on assessment

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Education and PARAKH - the national assessment centre, organised the first national-level workshop on assessment with the states and union territories (UTs). The workshop was organised in New Delhi and focused on school assessment, examination practices and equality between educational boards nationwide.

The workshop discussed the rote learning culture in India and emphasised designing standardised question papers, balancing the weightage given to formative and summative assessments and reducing the burden associated with higher education institutions. Along with this, the workshop also focused on the analysis of the results of secondary and higher secondary examinations.

The workshop was chaired by Sanjay Kumar, secretary of the Department of School Education and Literacy, who stressed the need to bring equality between different educational boards. The workshop was also attended by officials from the Ministry of Education, CBSE, NCERT, NIOS, NCVET and NCTE, along with state education secretaries, state project directors schools, SCERT, and officials from State Examination Boards across India also attended the meeting.

Parakh is an organisation under the National Council of Research and Training (NCERT). This organisation aims to bring school boards from different states and UT together on a common platform. In India, there are 60 educational boards in all the states and UT.

Parakh will focus on the following aspects of the various educational boards in India:

• Curriculum standards

• Grading systems

• Evaluation methodologies

• Recognition of certificates

• Grade obtained in different boards