The Central Board of Secondary Education’s proposal to replace homework for middle school students with more engaging and interesting exercises under the head of ‘Practice Work’ or ‘Self Work’ has been welcomed by heads of institutions, teachers and students.
“A move like this is entirely not new to the CBSE since they had done this a few years ago for primary classes. While there definitely needs to be an emphasis on continued practice for subjects like mathematics, innovative projects and activities are welcome given that students too have now changed with the times,” said Minoo Agarwal, Principal of the DAV Public School, Velachery.
“Students are extremely imaginative and creative, especially with the access to technology they have today, and the introduction of such activities will definitely be of immense benefit to them,” she said.
Usual homework
At the middle school level, currently, students from the city said that they get the usual homework every day, which includes writing questions and answers in their notebooks, practising sums, vocabulary learning and writing exercises for English in the form of essays and letters.
“However, with the introduction of the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system, students were also getting the chance to do interesting projects and practice work as teachers had been instructed to give innovative topics to make work such as writing essays more engaging,” a teacher from the city said.
Innovative work
Now middle schools students may also get to do exercises such as watching the proceedings of the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha, helping parents plan the monthly budget and carrying out mock drills as part of disaster management rallies.
The proposals were released in a manual on ‘Alternatives for Homework’, to enhance the learning of children by giving them interesting and engaging activities and projects.
Welcoming the move, Prema Daniel, Director, Centre for Training and Resources in Early Childhood Education, said that self-learning, which has been made innovative, would help a great deal in developing the skills and abilities of a middle-school student.
“Even at the kindergarten and primary level, we keep having parents ask for homework as they think anything written will immediately help the child. While the students do need practice, ensuring that it is done in a way that they enjoy it will help instead of asking the students to write pages of exercises,” she said.
The Board’s plans to introduce interesting activities will help in skill development, experts said
