The CBSE’s Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system, which entails frequent evaluation of students, needs a “thorough review” in design and appropriateness, as well as in teaching training and implementation, says an impact evaluation report carried out in various government schools in Haryana.
The CCE, which intends to help improve a student’s performance by identifying his/her learning difficulties at regular intervals and employing suitable remedial measures, was introduced by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in 2009 under the Right to Education (RTE) Act.
Carried out in 500 government primary and upper primary schools in Haryana, the evaluation intended to quantify the effect of CCE and NGO Pratham’s Learning Enhancement Programme (LEP) that provides teachers with the “right tools and space” enabling them to teach according to a child’s competency level.
“There are a variety of issues that affect the Indian education system — lack of physical, human resources and financial inputs, lack of teacher accountability, inappropriate pedagogy and curriculum, health, knowledge barriers of students and parents,” Shobhini Mukerji, executive director, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J—PAL), South Asia, told IANS. The Haryana government partnered with research centre J-PAL to conduct a rigorous randomised impact evaluation of both CCE and LEP in two districts — Mahendragarh and Kurukshetra.
The primary schools evaluated were divided into four groups of 100 each. Group one received only CCE treatment, group two received only LEP, group three received both programmes simultaneously and group four received neither. The students were tested on their abilities in basic Hindi and basic math — written and oral. The 100 upper primary schools surveyed were divided into two lots, one where CCE was in force and other where it wasn’t. (The LEP is applicable to only primary schools.)
Sharing the results of the evaluation, Harini Kannan, senior research manager, J-PAL South Asia, said that the LEP demonstrates that government teachers can improve learning outcomes through changes in teaching practices. “The CCE programme had no significant effect on test scores for students in either primary or upper primary schools. The CCE scheme, in its current form, needs a thorough review in design and appropriateness, as well as in teacher training and implementation,” Kannan told.
