The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Training institutes invited to train CBSE teachers

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Monday, May 10, 2010
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Training institutes invited to train CBSE teachers

Meera Srinivasan

Specific training pertaining to CCE will help, say teachers

Photo: S. Thanthoni

Training teachers specifically for the CCE will enable them to do more justice to the system, note experts. —

CHENNAI: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has asked interested training institutions to get in touch with it in regard to offering in-service training to its teachers.

According to a circular on its official website, the CBSE is keen on inclusion of empowered teachers through continuous professional development in Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE).

The CCE was introduced for Class IX students in the academic year that has just concluded.

Assessment

The initiative had schools evaluating students' performance using formative and summative assessment. It was one of the measures that the Ministry of Human Resource Development introduced with the aim of making education less stressful for students.

Welcoming the CBSE's decision to tap the expertise of professional training institutes, Mallika Mani, Director, Srikriti- The Teacher Education Centre, suggests the board come up with a common training manual for the exercise.

“It's important to standardise the quality of such teacher training programmes,” she says.

Recalling her experience of addressing a group of teachers in Jaipur recently, she says that the teachers said they would like to be trained on ways to carry out formative and summative assessment that is integral to the CCE. “We found that many of the teachers did not have a clue about it. In fact, some school principals also tell us that teachers need training, as they are not very sure about the CCE,” she says.

S. Amudha Lakshmi, Principal of Chettinad Vidyashram School, also feels specific training pertaining to the CCE would help all teachers.

“In our school, for instance, we follow the CCE right from Class I, as per CBSE guideline. It will make a big difference to all my teachers if they were trained to carry out formative and summative assessment effectively.”

Emphasising that much of the success of the CCE depended on how well teachers warmed up to the idea and understood it, she says: “Once we understand the CCE and have teachers trained, it will make the exercise more fruitful.”

It is no easy task to assess children, observe experts. “We are talking of inclusive, differentiated assessment these days, where every child is given ample opportunity to progress,” says Ms. Mani.

While providing qualitative feedback to students, the focus is on details.

“We cannot just say ‘Let's make the children do projects or a role play and assess. We have to get into ‘What about the project, are we going to assess and how? How will a role play be conducted and what are the rubrics to be looked at? Appropriate training can make a significant difference here,” she says.

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