Factor in Class 9 to 11 marks for Class 12 report card: Govt proposal

After discussions with 32 school boards over the past year, PARAKH has submitted a report to the Education Ministry this month recommending measures to align evaluation of all school boards.

One key recommendation is to include performance from Classes 9, 10, and 11 in the final Class 12 report card, with a weight of 15% for Class 9, 20% for Class 10, 25% for Class 11, and 40% for Class 12.

According to the PARAKH report, evaluation should be a combination of formative assessments (continuous classroom assessments through holistic progress cards, group discussions, projects) and summative assessments (term-end examinations).

The report suggests that in Class 9, 70% of the final score be drawn from formative assessments and 30% from summative assessments. In Class 10, the final score will be based 50% on formative assessments and 50% on summative assessments. For Class 11, it will be 40% formative and 60% summative assessments. In Class 12, the weight for formative assessments will drop to 30% with 70% of the final score based on summative assessments.

Sources said this report will be shared with all school boards for feedback. In fact, the first round of discussions was held last week with authorities of Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

In this meeting, states are learnt to have argued for a different approach towards factoring in class-wise performance. Instead of integrating the performance of Classes 9, 10, and 11 into the final Class 12 report card, the states argued, 40% of the score from Class 9 and 60% from Class 10 should contribute to the final Class 10 score. Similarly, 40% of the score from Class 11 and 60% from Class 12 should contribute to the final Class 12 score.

PARAKH will now hold discussions with the remaining school boards in August.

The holistic progress card for classes 9 to 12, which will play a role in the formative assessments, has already been designed by PARAKH and includes the student’s evaluation of themselves in aspects like “time management”, teacher’s assessment of the student in group project work, and peer feedback.

In its recommendations, PARAKH has also suggested that the assessments be in terms of credits: a student can earn 40 credits in Classes 9 and 10 each, and 44 credits in Classes 11 and 12 each. In Classes 9 and 10, 32 credits will be subject-specific (12 credits in three languages; four credits in mathematics; four for science, four for social science etc). Recommendations include that boards should develop a system of credit transfer in line with the National Credit Framework.

A government official said that the concept of credits suggested by PARAKH is in line with the mention of the ‘Academic Bank of Credits’ in NEP 2020, and that this is the basis of the proposal to “credit” a student’s achievements at the secondary level and amalgamate that with the board exam performance.

Officials said this transition cannot be “abrupt” and hence deliberations with states are on to address any misgivings and arrive at a consensus.