Essay Summary of Comprehensive Continuous Evaluation

Over the years it is the opinion of every educationist, teacher and general public that board or annual school examinations based on tests in two or three hours duration provide limited information on various elements of curriculum and range of learning in any subjects. In view of the above short comings in the existing system of evaluation it is desirable that evaluation of students should be not only continuous but comprehensive also.
The term Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) is used for school based evaluation of pupils in which their assessment is done on a continuous basis throughout the year and which is also comprehensive in nature, in the sense that it is not confined to assessment in scholastic subjects but also covers co-scholastic areas such as performance in games/sports, Physical education, Creative Education, Art, Music, Dance, Drama, other cultural activities and Personal & Social qualities.
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. 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 reduce the workload on students and to improve the overall skill and ability of the student by means of evaluation of other activities. 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 .
The National Policy on Education (1986) and the Programme of Action (1992) followed by the National Curriculum Framework of School Education (1986 and 2000) reiterated the need for developing the personal and social qualities in learners. They stressed the point that the evaluation should be comprehensive in nature, wherein all learning experiences pertaining to scholastic, co-scholastic and personal and social qualities are assessed. To make this happen the MHRD announced Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation system which is to be implemented in every school .