Context: Recently, The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH), hosted the inaugural National-level workshop in New Delhi. The primary focus of the workshop was to address school assessments, examination practices, and the standardization of educational boards nationwide.
What is Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH)?
- It is a National Assessment Centre(country’s first national assessment regulator), which has been set up as an organisation under the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
- It has been launched as part of the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020.
- Educational Testing Service (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 mandate of PARAKH is to work on bringing the 60 school Boards across States and Union Territories on a common platform.
- It will work on three major assessment areas: large-scale assessment like the National Achievement Survey, school-based assessments and thirdly capacity building.
Significance
- It aims to set up assessment guidelines for all boards to help remove disparities in scores of students enrolled with different state boards.
- There is Diversity in school education in India due to geographic differences and multiple languages. It would bring in the “uniformity” in assessment across the 60 boards in 36 States and Union Territories. This involves harmonising curriculum standards, grading systems, and evaluation methods to bolster the credibility and recognition of certificates and grades obtained across different boards
- 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. It will encourage and assist school boards to shift their assessment patterns towards meeting the skill requirements of the 21st century.
- 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 “technical standards for the design, conduct, analysis and reporting” of tests at all levels of school education.
- 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.
- It will act as a common platform for the interaction of all concerned stakeholders in order to develop a holistic approach that ensures a fair assessment system which promotes equity in performance and equivalence in the assessment of students.
