For the third year in a row, the State Education Department will embark on a massive evaluation drive of students to assess the quality of education being imparted in government and aided schools.

 The evaluation process, slated to be held in two phases between January 3 and 18, is conducted by the Karnataka School Quality Assurance Organisation (KSQAO) constituted solely for measuring students’ ability to learn. The assessment programme, will cover 17.39 lakh students studying in standard V and VII in 47,819  government and aided schools across the State. Public Instruction Commissioner Kumar Naik told reporters on Tuesday that the assessment will help the government evolve reform programmes.

It will also help in improving outcomes in primary education besides curriculum evaluation. As many as  30 competencies in each student would be evaluated and compiled at the block, cluster and school level. School-level intervention programmes have already been initiated based on the results of the previous two surveys, Mr Naik added.

Written test
 The assessment will be done through a written test and as many as 47,772 evaluators have been specially trained for the evaluation purpose. The first phase of the evaluation will be held between January 3 and 5, while the second phase will be held between January 16 and 18.

Admission panel
Later replying to queries, Mr Naik admitted that there has been a delay in the proposal to put in place a comprehensive admission policy for aided and unaided institutions in the State for the next  academic year.
A high-level committee, constituted for the same, will expedite its process for formulating the guidelines for the policy.

As a part of the survey, the KSQAO proposes to set standards for learning of English and assess if these targets are achieved by schools.

Standards for learning
To ensure quality of learning of English at the primary level, the education department also proposes to fix accountability on schools which do not achieve the set standards. At the same time guidelines have been developed in order to prevent schools from getting obsessed with results and not the real standards of learning.