SBA will focus on competency development rather than content memorization: Prof Indrani

Srinagar:: The first of its kind five day online training workshop on School Based Assessment (SBA) for teachers and teacher educators, organized by the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT), Jammu and Kashmir, concluded here Monday.
The purpose of the workshop was to make the teachers understand the concept of school based assessment as enshrined in the National Education Policy (NEP) announced by the Ministry of Education, Government of India, in 2020. The policy, whose implementing agency is the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT), is referred to as NEP-2020.
The workshop was, earlier, e-inaugurated by the Principal Secretary, School Education Department, B K Singh, which was attended by more than 100 teachers from all districts of J&K.
Professor Indrani Bhaduri, who heads the Educational Survey Division at the NCERT, joined the workshop from New Delhi.
Speaking on the occasion, Director SCERT, Prof Veena Pandita said that the traditional form of examination suffered from a variety of flaws putting students under a lot of pressure.
“The SBA encompasses a set of tools and techniques to assess a child’s performance while moving beyond marks and grades,” she maintained. She added that the assessment would be used to benchmark students’ learning against criteria—process skills/learning indicators and learning outcomes— based on identified curricular aims and objectives.
Prof Pandita said the SBA has been so thought out that it provides a comprehensive information regarding the extent of student learning vis-à-vis curricular objectives including performance in different subject areas because different children exhibit different skill sets.
Professor Indrani Bhaduri, while underlining the importance of introducing the concept of SBA, said that the National Achievement Survey (NAS) conducted in 2017 highlighted some grave issues in our education system that needed to be mitigated. She added that NEP 2020 has also made recommendations which need to be understood and implemented.
She said the SBA is aimed at facilitating the attainment of competencies of the students in order to assess efficiency of the teaching-learning process within the broader educational philosophy of assessment for learning. It is child centered and activity based pedagogy that will focus on competency development rather than content memorization, she maintained.
“It invariably puts an end to the monopoly of examination system on the education system and to think about a better practice that will make the student more interactive and expressive,” she remarked. “Because the teacher is at the heart of the teaching-learning process, it’s important that they undergo rigorous training to fully understand the concept and then implement it on the ground,” Prof Indrani asserted.
The first of its kind workshop on SBA was organised by the Educational Research and Assessment Survey (ERAS) Division of SCERT.