Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation and Grading
CCE refers to a system of school-based assessment that covers all aspects of a student’s development. It attempts to shift the emphasis from ‘testing’ to ‘holistic learning’ with an aim of creating young adults possess appropriate skills and desirable characteristics as human beings along with academic excellence.
The term ‘continuous’ emphasises that evaluation of identified aspects of students’ growth and development needs to be a continuous process rather than an event, built into total teaching-learning process and spread over the entire span of academic session. It means regularity of assessment, frequency of unit testing, diagnosis of learning gaps, use of corrective measures, retesting and feedback of evidence to teachers and students for self evaluation.
The term ‘comprehensive’ refers to the coverage of assessment both in scholastic and co-scholastic aspects of students’ growth and development. Since abilities, attitudes and aptitudes manifest themselves in forms other than the written word, the term refers to application of variety of tools and techniques (both testing and non-testing) and aims at assessing learners’ development in areas of learning like knowledge, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating.
Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) Continuous and comprehensive evaluation is a process of assessment, mandated by the Right to Education Act, of India. This approach to assessment has been introduced by state governments in India, as well as by the Central Board of Secondary Education in India. The main aim of CCE is to evaluate every aspect of the child during their presence at the school. This is believed to help reduce the pressure on the child during/before examinations as the student will have to sit for multiple tests throughout the year, of which no test or the syllabus covered will be repeated at the end of the year, whatsoever. The CCE method is claimed to bring enormous changes from the traditional chalk and talk method of teaching, provided it is implemented accurately. As a part of this new system, student's marks will be replaced by grades which will be evaluated through a series of curricular and extra-curricular evaluations along with academics. The aim is to decrease the workload on the student by means of continuous evaluation by taking number of small tests throughout the year in place of single test at the end of the academic program. Only Grades are awarded to students based on work experience skills, dexterity, innovation, steadiness, teamwork, public speaking, behavior, etc. to evaluate and present an overall measure of the student's ability. This helps the students who are not good in academics to show their talent in other fields such as arts, humanities, sports, music, athletics, and also helps to motivate the students who have a thirst of knowledge. CCE is child-centric and views each learner as unique. This evaluation system aims to build on the individual child’s abilities, progress and development. That the child should not feel burdened during the learning years, CCE made formative and summative assessments mandatory in all CBSE schools. The learner thus was also benefitted by having to focus on only a small part of the entire syllabus designed for an academic year.
Main Features
CCE emphasises two-fold objective namely, continuity in assessment and assessment of broad based learning.
Identifies learning process of students at regular intervals with specific objectives Employs variety of remedial measures of teaching, based on the learning needs and potential of different students
Objectives
To help develop cognitive, psychomotor and affective skills
To lay emphasis on thought process and de-emphasise memorisation
To make evaluation an integral part of teaching learning process
To use evaluation for improvement of student achievement and teaching-learning strategies on the basis of regular diagnosis followed by remedial instructions
To use evaluation as a quality control device to maintain desired standard of performance
To determine social utility, desirability or effectiveness or a programme and take appropriate decisions about the learner, the process of learning and the learning environment.
To make the process of teaching and learning a learner-centred activity
Need of CCE
To take care of continuity and periodicity of assessment
To overcome the limitations of the traditional system of evalution: the traditional system was confined only to scholastic aspects and did not promote the child from holistic perspective. CCE helps to make the system of evaluation more comprehensive.
To make evaluation an integral part of total teaching learning process: Evaluation was not considered as part of teaching in traditional system. It was considered as a process apart from teaching. CCE considers evaluation as an integral part of teaching learning process
To meet the needs of individual learners: CCE has scope to evaluate each and every child. It helps to achieve the aims of inclusive education.
Different education commissions have recommended Continuous and Comprehensive evaluation as an integral part of educatio1 to n. Kothari education commission suggested that evaluation should be comprehensive including all those aspects of students’ growth including personality traits, interests and attitudes. National Policy on Education 1986, recommended that “continuous and comprehensive evaluation should incorporate both scholastic and non -scholastic aspects of evaluation spread over the total span of instructional time”. The National Curriculum Framework 2005 also suggested that ‘School based CCE system should be established, which can reduce stress among children, make evaluation comprehensive and regular and produce learners with greater skills and creative works.’ Right to Education act 2009, stated that a scheme of continuous and comprehensive evaluation should be implemented from standard 1st to 8th standard.
Specific reasons to implement CCE:
To reduce stress and anxiety among students
To reduce drop outs To give greater focus for learning than teaching
To make learning more meaningful
To emphasise conceptual clarification through experiential learning
To help students to develop cognitive, affective and psycho motor skills
To de-emphasise memorization and rote learning
To guide teaching learning process based on appropriate diagnostic processes
To make learning process more learner centred.
Advantages:
Elimination of subjectivity in evaluation Provides scope to give meaningful feedback Contributes for further learning
Gives scope to make learner responsible of learning
Holistic evaluation possible
Possibility of wider use of evaluation results
Learning becomes more meaningful
Scope to make evaluation integral part of teaching learning process
Reduces stress and tension
Checks students’ achievement in regular intervals of time
Communicates the limitations in students’ learning and promotes further learning Encourages specific abilities of students
Improves students’ performance
All round development of students is possible
Scope to change teaching and learning techniques based on feedback
Dragonises students’ needs and problems
Gives proper feedback for both students and teachers
Motivates students for further learning
Limitations
Time consuming
Needs proper orientation
Unfavourable attitude of teachers and school setup
Assessment is elaborative
Difficult in classes where the number of students is more
The grading system :
The word ‘grade’ is derived from the Latin word ‘gradus’ where it means ‘step’. Grading is a process where in subjects or pupils may be classified on the basis of predefined standards and aimed at minimizing misclassification. In grading, students are categorized into a few ability groups on the basis of their performance and proficiency. It involves the use of a set of specialized symbols or numerals whose meaning ought to be clearly defined and uniformly understood by the students, teachers, parents and all other stakeholders. The grading symbols must have the same meaning for all who use them to serve the purpose of communication meaningful and precise. The grading process depends on many things such as nature of the subject matter, the difficulty of the question paper, the different abilities such as intellectual, physical, emotional, personal, social etc assessed by tools of evaluation and precision is required in the evaluation program.
TYPES OF GRADING
1. Direct Grading :
In direct grading the performance exhibited by the examinees is assessed in qualitative terms. It may be in the form of mode of behaviors expected from the response of the question or activity to be assessed or by using certain indicators expressed in the form of specific behaviors on the basis of the impression so obtained by the examiner is directly expressed in terms of letter grades. This method may profitably used for the assessment of both cognitive and non cognitive learning outcomes. It is suggested that non-cognitive factors that are important should be enumerated stage wise and evaluated and reported separately in terms of letter grades. For grading cognitive learning outcomes, the examiners are required to categorize answers and to provide grade for its quality based on the range of the question and weightage given in the question paper. Usually numerical values are used for weightage. The weighted grade points of an answer are arrived at by multiplying grade point by weightage. The sum of weighted grade points is then divided by the sum of the weightage to arrive at the Grade Point Average (GPA) for the paper. The grades of different papers could be combined and the mean taken to arrive at the cumulative Grade point average. The following table depicts the assignment of grades.
Five Point Scale:
Grade point average of the paper is equal to total weighted grade point divided by sum of weightage. Here 56 /15 = 3.73. This GPA can be converted into a suitable, grade point scale which will give the grade of that paper.
2. Indirect grading :
In this technique, marks are assigned to the answers as usual. Then these marks are converted into grades. This is done mainly in two ways Norm-referenced (relative) grading and criterion-referenced (absolute grading). Which type of grading is most suitable will depend on the purpose for which it is used. If we want to identify the best students in a group, then we can adopt norm-referenced grading. If it is to indicate what each student has achieved, then criterion-referenced grading is preferred.
2. (a) Criterion-referenced Grading (absolute grading).
Assigning grades on an absolute basis involves comparing a student’s performance with specified standards set by the authority, preferably in reference to agreed-on performance standards and for the school or board. These standards may be concerned with the degree of mastery to be achieved by students and may be specified as (a) tasks to be performed or (b) the percentage of correct answers to be obtained for a test designed to measure a clearly defined set of learning tasks. With a standard based system, letter grades are assigned on the basis of an absolute standard of performance rather than a relative one. If all students demonstrate a high level of mastery consistent with the established performance standards, all will receive high grades. Here the grade is assigned according to a student’s level of achievement or performance, regardless of other student’s achievement or performance. For attaining mastery learning, percentage of marks can be set as absolute standards. The assignment of grades can be based on the range of marks as shown below
Marks - Range Grade Grade point
91 - 100 A1 10.00
81 - 90 A2 9.0
71 - 80 B1 8.0
61 - 70 B2 7.0
51 - 60 C1 6.0
41 - 50 C2 5.0
33 - 40 D 4.0
21 - 32 E1
00 - 20 E2
For using this system of grading the teaches should have some prior knowledge of what level of achievement or performance is reasonable to expect. Teachers should also have knowledge about the difficulty level of test and each of the items in the test.
2. (b) Norm referenced Grading (Relative Grading)
When using a non-referenced grading, teacher compares a student’s performance with that of a reference group, typically one’s classmates. With this system, the grade is determined by the student’s relative ranking in the total group rather than by some absolute standard of achievement. Because the grading is based on relative performance, the grade is influenced by both the student’s performance and the performance of the group. The assignment of relative grades is essentially a matter of ranking the students in order of overall achievement and assigning letter grades on the basis of each student’s rank in the group. This ranking might be limited to a single classroom group or might be based on the combined distributions of several classroom groups taking the same course. The most common version of this approach is grading on the normal curve. There are two different techniques used in grading on the normal curve. They are prefixed proportion approach and prefixed interval approach. Usually odd numbered grading scale is used. In prefixed proportion approach, before assigning letter grades proportion of each grade to be assigned must be determined. For example, if five point grading scale is using on the normal curve, then there must be equal percentage of A’s and F’s and also B’s and D’s. Thus, regardless of the group’s level of ability, the proportion of high grades is balanced by an equal proportion of low grades. An example of this type of assigning grade is as follows:-
Grade Percentage of students receiving grade
A = 10%
B = 20%
C = 40%
D = 20%
F = 10%
With this arrangement, in a class of 20 students, the two students receiving the highest grades will receive As, the next four students will receive Bs, the next eight students will receive Cs, the next four will receive Ds, and the two students with the lowest scores will receive Fs. This type of grading helps to prevent grade inflation.
Merits:
It reduces inter and intra examiners variability
Reduces fear of examination
Motivates learning Scope to strengthen self-esteem
It gives an estimation for students about their achievement
Gives an estimation of social and personal development
Helps administrative and guidance purposes
Informs parents about students’ progress
Limitations of Grading System:
Letter grades, for example, offer parents and others an approximate description of student achievement and the adequacy of their performance. This requires the abstraction of a great deal of information into a single symbol. In addition, cut-offs between grades are always arbitrary and difficult to justify. Grading lacks the richness of other, more detailed reporting methods such as narratives or standard based reports.
Discourages meritorious students.
Very difficult to fix a child to a grade, in spite of specific criteria, since the child may not exactly fit to any grade criteria.
It requires expertise to fix the criteria for grading
It is not suitable for quantitative evaluation
There is scope for subjectivity
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