CCE system for Class X from this year

The Primary and Secondary Education Department has decided to introduce the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system for Class X students from this year.

However, it has been a month since the commencement of the academic year and teachers are yet to be trained to adopt the new system.

Further, course material such as manuals and workbooks that will help guide teachers have not been printed.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Nagendra Kumar, Secretary, Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB), said that the printing of manuals would start by next month.

“There have been some problems in the tendering process with regard to printing of the manuals. The matter will be sorted out soon and printing will start by the first week of next month. Each school will be given a set of manuals,” he said.

There are two kinds of manuals/workbooks that will be given to the schools. One relating to the setting of questions for the external examinations (external assessment) of 80 marks and a second one that will provide details about activities related to the CCE.

Ganesh Bhat, principal, MES Teachers College, Bangalore, and chairman of the subcommittee of experts under KSEEB that was involved in the drafting of the new CCE pattern, said that the manuals will also be made available online in less than a week.

“We had a meeting to finalise the manual  and a detailed copy of the same will be uploaded online,” he said. 

As far as the training of teachers is concerned, Nagendra said that it will start with a round of teleconferencing next week.

“The aim is to train master resource persons at the state-level, who will in turn train teachers at the divisional, district and taluk-level.
Training will be for all schools whether government, aided or unaided” he said.

The teleconferencing will be followed by face-to-face training and even the All India Radio is being roped in to be part of the effort.

“So far there has only been awareness building programmes through the media. In any case the CCE has already been implemented in the primary and secondary school level and the pattern in class X is only slightly different in structure. Teachers are already aware about the system,” said Bhat.

Teachers lack clarity     
                                                             
“While the CCE has been brought in class X this year, it had been implemented in lower classes from the previous years. As a result, while primary and secondary school teachers have some fair knowledge about the system, high school teachers still have a lot to learn,” said a high school teacher at a government school in Koppal.

With little information about the new scheme of things, there is clearly a great deal of confusion.

“How does one exactly judge students on the basis of their behaviour, attitude and progress? There are a number of other such issues which have been confusing teachers, making them want more information. I have personally asked the local BEO (block education officer) to give us information about when the training will be conducted but he said that he has not received any information from his higher ups,” said the teacher.