cce has made lerning hard

achers talk on CCE

Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) has been touted as one of the most progressive developments in the otherwise orthodox Indian education system.

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What is its aim?

To decrease students’ stress of board exams
To introduce a uniform and comprehensive pattern of education for children all across the country
How does it work?

CCE helps in improving a student’s performance by identifying his/her learning difficulties at regular time intervals. The process starts at the beginning of the academic session.
It employs suitable remedial measures for enhancing their learning performance.
This form of evaluation offers flexibility to schools to plan their own academic schedules as per specified guidelines.
As part of this new system, a student's ‘marks’ are replaced by ‘grades’ which are evaluated through a series of curricular and extra-curricular evaluations along with academics. The aim is to reduce the workload on students and to improve the overall skill and ability of the student.
Grades are awarded to students to evaluate and present an overall measure of the student's ability based on work experience skills, dexterity, innovation, steadiness, teamwork, public speaking, behavior, etc.
Last year, the CBSE introduced a new set of educational reforms with Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), suggesting an overhaul of the education system. Documents have been circulated across the country, and the intensive training by the CBSE to principals and teachers have been a noteworthy effort. What is striking about the whole exercise is the effort of the government to break away from the tyranny of examinations, which have been largely dominated by paper and pencil assessments.

As an educator, and now as a teacher-educator it aggrieves me that CCE has created more chaos rather than being welcomed by schools. The bewilderment it has generated is equivocal amongst school managements, teachers, students, parents, publishers and other agencies working in the field of education. Thus, there are schools demanding intensive CCE training for different stakeholders. Students feel that it will mean more assessments for them on an ongoing basis. Teachers feel that their work has increased tremendously with assessments having additional ‘descriptive indicators’.

It is shocking to look at some solutions that have immediately come up in the market like the CCE software which will help teachers grade the descriptive indicators. Such solutions further state that there is no need for anecdotal records; a software will grade all life skills, attitudes and values. Then, there are publishers who feel that adding more worksheets or assessments in books will make their books CCE-centered.

However, what is visible through all these efforts is the lack of understanding of the framework and ideology