PARAKH to bring uniformity across school boards
| Date :27-Feb-2023 |
NEW DELHI,
INDIA’S first national assessment regulator PARAKH will bring the much-needed uniformity in assessment by more than 60 boards in the country, Educational Testing Service (ETS) CEO Amit Sevak has said. ETS, which conducts key tests such as TOEFL and GRE, has been chosen by the National Council for Education Research (NCERT) for setting up the regulatory platform. The Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH) will work on setting norms, standards and guidelines for student assessment and evaluation for all recognised school boards in the country.
“PARAKH will be an independent organisation affiliated to the Education Ministry which will be looking into three major areas - large-scale assessment like the National Achievement Survey, school-based assessments and thirdly capacity building. “The first step is to develop some norms and standardised guidelines for assessment including summative tests and constant new forms of assessing students,” Sevak told PTI in an interview.
Stressing upon the diversity in school education in India due to geographic differences and multiple languages, Sevak said PARAKH will bring in the “uniformity” in assessment across the 62 boards in 36 States and Union Territories. “Our vision is to be able to effectively measure the acquisition of skills at K12 level. Right now we are in the process of setting up a blueprint for PARAKH, an initial framework.... We will have discussions around oganisational forms, roles and responsibilities, eventually we will be talking about more specific details like location and so on,” he said.
“We will study the current context in which assessments have been provided...Now that we are in a post-COVID world, we want to have a fresh look in the current context...The kinds of measurement that the Government wants to track and explore the ability to go beyond traditional cognitive assessment,” he added. Sevak, however, did not comment on a definite timeline by when PARAKH will be formally ready. A reform outlined in the new National Education Policy (NEP), PARAKH will set up assessment guidelines for all boards to help remove disparities in scores of students enrolled with different State boards.
“ETS’s understanding of global best practices in curriculum and assessment will help in standardising several aspects across various school boards thereby paving the way for equality, consistency and uniformity not only in assessment but also in teaching and learning practices,” he said. Asked about whether PARAKH will include moderation of grades, a policy junked by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Sevak said it is too early to comment on it.
