Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
- Union government is planning to set up a national regulator PAREKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) for achieving a benchmark framework to assess students at the secondary and higher secondary level.
- PARAKH, is also part of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
- It’s a proposed regulator, which will act as a constituent unit of the NCERT, and will also be tasked with holding periodic learning outcome tests like the National Achievement Survey (NAS) and State Achievement Surveys.
- Its team will consist of leading assessment experts with a deep understanding of the education system in India and internationally.
- It will eventually become the national single-window source for all assessment-related information and expertise, with a mandate to support learning assessment in all forms, both nationally and where applicable, internationally
Objectives:
- Setting norms, standards and guidelines for student assessment and evaluation for all recognized school boards of India,
- It will encourage and help school boards to shift their assessment patterns towards meeting the skill requirements of the 21st century
- It will bring uniformity across the state and central boards which currently follow different standards of evaluation, leading to wide disparities in scores.
- The benchmark assessment framework will seek to put an end to the emphasis on rote learning, as envisaged by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
Suggestions:
- Various states have endorsed the NEP’s proposal to hold board exams twice a year, including one for helping students improve their scores.
- States are also on board regarding a proposal to offer two types of papers on mathematics — a standard exam, and another to test higher-level competency.
Significance:
- It will help reduce the fear of maths among students and encourage learning.
- Removes Disparity in college Admission:
- It will help tackle the problem of students of some state boards being at a disadvantage during college admissions as compared to their peers in CBSE schools.
- It will develop and implement the technical standards for the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of tests at all levels of school education.
Way Forward
PAREKH creates a level playing field and reduces the disparity among various state boards and further aims to facilitate an inclusive, participatory and holistic approach to education, which takes into consideration field experiences, empirical research, stakeholder feedback, as well as lessons learned from best practices.
SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT
