Education, Careers & Professional News
Leading from the front
Source
toi
Date
2005-06-16
Information
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is not just a Board, but the face of secondary education in India. Right from making the process of learning enjoyable, to examination reforms, or preparing children to cope with tragedies like the Tsunami and make them a proactive member in the social process, the Board has included a wide gamut of issues on what it calls its `holistic agenda’ for a futuristic education policy on the roadmap of modern India.
The man behind the changing face of CBSE, chairman Ashok Kumar Ganguly speaks to the Education Times on the blueprint of CBSE on educating India and ensuring excellence.
In the broader spectrum of education what is CBSE’s role in India?
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is one of the 41 boards in the country, of which three are national boards. Being a national Board, CBSE has a greater role to play, to promote quality education in the country, excellence in the secondary education sector and to make liaisons with the other state Boards to raise their standards and capacity building.
CBSE is seen as a very potent body in the secondary education sector and we would like to play the role of a national Board in school education, making linkages with various state Boards for improvement in the pedagogy, classroom transaction, teacher’s training and for having an uniformed approach for evaluations.
What is CBSE’s role in de-stressing education?
The very immediate focus is to de-stress education in the formative period of schooling, so that learning becomes enjoyable, creative and fun.
We have taken certain very small, yet significant measures like no to schoolbags and homework upto class II. The Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) have already implemented it and we are expecting the elite public schools to respond to this advisory suggestion. We want to let the students enjoy certain amount of flexibility and space to develop their inner talents.
We have developed alternatives to homework for classes III to V, as we do not want students to reproduce the same stuff that are already there in the textbooks. We want the students to be involved in creative work and critical thinking through which they will be in contact with the environment.
Until class V we need to have a comprehensive and continuous evaluation system with a `five-point’ grading and no `pass-fail’ criteria. Moreover, from now on our emphasis will be on softer subjects, such as arts, dance, music and this must be reflected in the assessment card. We have delivered two assessment cards separately, one for class I and II, and the other for class III and V, so that there is an upkeep of the entire holistic file of the students.