The government plans to form in each state a cadre of dedicated professionals, who will be drawn from the existing pool of teachers in schools and academics engaged with the SCERTs (State Council of Educational Research and Training), to set question papers of board exams and develop standard marking schemes to bring “equivalence” in assessment. According to the proposal under consideration, the cadre will play an important role in addressing the differences in assessment, which results in disparities in scores of board exams, among various state boards and the CBSE. It will mark a departure from the prevailing model of using only teachers with some years of experience for the purpose. One of the objectives of the move, said an official, is to ensure “inter-rater reliability”. “In simple words, we want to stamp out possibilities where two students write similar types of answers to a question and yet score vastly different marks. It happens mostly because some teachers are strict while others are lenient while checking answer sheets and thus award different scores even for answers with no major differences,” said Indrani Bhaduri, Professor and Head, PARAKH, NCERT. The newly set-up body PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), is under the administrative control of NCERT. “The plan is to have a dedicated cadre in every state for setting question papers and developing the standard rubric for marking. The rubric will define which types of answers merit a certain score. The cadre will be trained for this purpose of developing higher order thinking skills questions as opposed to the current model where teachers with some years of experience are thought to be ready to set question papers. Setting question paper is a skill which needs training to develop,” Bhaduri said. Just like the NCERT at the national level, the SCERTs, which come under the state governments, are engaged in developing curriculum, manuals for teachers and evaluation and assessment at the school education level. A senior Education Ministry official said that in many states, the existing model has led to a situation where question papers are set by referring to the papers set over the previous five years. “As a result, the same sets of questions get repeated every few years, encouraging the coaching industry and guide books,” said the official. An offshoot of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, PARAKH's main role will be “establishing comparative measures and equivalence” among school examination boards and promoting collaboration among them, according to the NCERT. It is expected to 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. To gradually prepare the educational system for the proposed changes, the questionnaires in NCERT textbooks at the end of every chapter will also be designed accordingly based on the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) currently being drafted. The NCERT plans to introduce new books, based on the NCF, across grades from the academic session 2024-25, added the official. Currently, PARAKH is holding regional workshops to analyse question papers of different boards. Three such meetings have so far taken place at Ajmer (for state boards in northern and western regions), Mysore (southern zone) and Jammu and Kashmir (eastern and Northeastern region boards). “So far, PARAKH has tried to analyse the differences in the question papers and marking schemes. For instance, it is checking what percentage of questions framed under a particular board tests rote learning and what percentage of questions are application-based. The idea is to have more of the latter and reduce dependency on rote learning,” the official said.
