Last update:November 15, 2024, 11:58 AM IST

PARAKH, the National Assessment Center of NCERT, has identified and trained teachers for each of the 34 government education boards who will be the ‘master trainers’ of their respective boards.

The assessment system, as part of the broader ‘Equivalence of School Boards’ initiative, is in line with the New National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. (Getty Image for representation)

School boards across the country are working on and are likely to introduce the new model question paper for classes 10 and 12, developed by professional writers, from the 2025-2026 academic session, News18 has learnt.

PARAKH, the national assessment center of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), has identified and trained teachers for each of the 34 government education boards who will be the ‘master trainers’ of their respective boards and will train in their turn the teachers. develop a cadre of paper writers for school boards.

The assessment center has prepared a module and formulated guidelines to develop a cadre of professional writers, full-time teachers who are currently trained in designing and balancing questionnaires, starting from classes 10 and 12, we learn.

The training will be provided through the various State Councils of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).

PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), a constituent unit of NCERT, is responsible for establishing standards and guidelines for student assessment for all recognized educational boards in India.

The Center has focused on standardizing all education boards as per the NEP. Since education is a subject in the ‘concurrent’ list, states are not required to follow the Union government’s guidelines.

The assessment system, as part of the broader “Equivalence of School Boards” initiative, is in line with the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which envisages a competency-based model of education, where assessment is integrated into the learning process.

In July this year, PARAKH had submitted the report ‘Establishing Equivalence between School Boards’ to the Union Ministry of Education (MoE). One of the key recommendations of the report, apart from suggesting a cumulative assessment system for grades 9 to 12, was that all public school boards develop a cadre of “professional writers” to standardize assessments in higher grades .

Furthermore, a report released by the Ministry of Education last August showed that more students in government school boards were failing class 10 and 12 exams than those enrolled in central school boards.

According to Professor Indrani Bhaduri, CEO of PARAKH, all 34 school boards are in tune with the equivalency recommendations and are preparing to train their teachers to develop their own cadre of paper writers by the end of the year. So far, all these boards are preparing to introduce the new question paper pattern for next year’s academic session for classes 10 and 12, which have board exams.

“We have held training workshops for each of these boards and now all have a master trainer, who will identify and further train teachers on the layout, which unlike current practice, is a technical exercise and requires a dedicated framework who is trained in its methodology, common plan and marking system,” said Prof Bhaduri.

Previously, teachers with 8-10 years of experience made questionnaires based on previous years’ questionnaires. But for a paper to be balanced, it takes a lot more understanding, training and technique, she added.

Workshops focus on designing questionnaires assessing a full range of skills, with practical sessions to unpack previous years’ questionnaires to understand gaps and explore the importance of marking systems, as outlined in the national framework curricula for school education. (NCF-SE) 2023.

“Scoring systems are as important as the test items themselves. Participants immersed themselves in the “art of grading,” learning to balance grading and question formats to truly reflect student understanding. As these officials return to their states, they are equipped not only with best practices, but also with a framework that brings India’s corporate boards together. closer to assessment equivalence – not by cloning, but by aligning standards to support equity and student mobility across regions,” she said.

Although some school boards, like the Central Board of School Education (CBSE), have introduced 10 percent weightage for skill-based questions in classes 11 and 12, not all boards have experimented with this method and neither for all subjects. Over the last three years, CBSE has increased the weightage of application of concept questions by 10 per cent every year, up to a maximum of 50 per cent.

PARAKH, however, recommends a fully competency-based quiz for higher grades.