The Central Board of Secondary Education has entered into a partnership with a private foreign education company, Pearson, to form a Centre for Assessment, Evaluation and Research which will evaluate CBSE’s examination system, carry out research on implementation of its schemes and develop research resources to help teachers. The partnership was announced by Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal here on Thursday. He also inaugurated the centre’s website.
The main purpose of the centre will be to develop research and assessment capabilities and resources for CBSE, its schools and teachers and “focus on International best practices in school-based assessment, teaching techniques and high stake examinations”.
Pearson (India) chairman Khozem Merchant said the entire project will be funded for the initial two years by the company’s philanthropic arm, Pearson Foundation, but the centre will start to generate its own financial revenues through different projects and activities within three years. Another objective of the centre would be to evaluate exam results, analyse them and help decide on the type of questions to be set.
CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi will also be the chairman of the centre’s executive council. “Initially it will focus on the impact of the recent CBSE innovations such as continuous comprehensive evaluation programme in classrooms and life skills curriculum,” said Mr. Joshi, adding that the centre would be “drawing on relevant international best practices to arrive at recommendations for improving teaching practices and approaches to assessment before rolling out an extensive programme of professional development of teachers.”
“It also seeks to look at the process of examinations, analyse the results, see what further improvement can be done and what type of training to be given to teachers if there is any shortcomings among its host of core activities,” he said.
While announcing the partnership, Mr. Kapil Sibal said one of the prime areas for any assessment was to evolve a mechanism where a child would be able to discover himself and communicate that discovery, adding that the new centre was another example of a successful public-private partnership.
He also said that the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) programme introduced some years ago would not be able to succeed unless there was a general transformation in the education system. “It won’t succeed unless teachers understand CCE,” he said, adding that education must to be viewed holistically.
