With the advent of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation ,CCE, it has now  become ubiquitous in educational system in India .The very purpose of CCE is to destress education for children and ensure the holistic growth of every child .It is to assess students performance on a regular and periodical basis. We are entering a period of significant reform which includes emphasis on formative assessment. As far as my supposition says, when formative assessment is well implemented in the classroom, it can essentially double the speed of student learning and if the process works it can produce whooping gains in students achievement. Many teachers say they do assessment for learning but often their assessment practice does not really reflect the intentions and principles that make CCE powerful. A lot of hue and cry has been raised when the system was first implemented because the teachers and the parents alike were not clear about the CCE and the confusion on the issue still persists.

There is no doubt that parents are the most important educators in their child s life. Now the onus on the parents have increased manifold with the introduction of this system. Parents who are committed to being involved in their child’s education on a daily basis have a profound impact on what the child learns and the child’s attitude towards education. Parents just need the commitment and a little bit of help to accomplish this goal. Now that the children are involved in so many activities in the school, many contented that the demands placed on students in the classroom are ever increasing. If a family does not have a plan to spend time on education, the students will fall behind and this places greater stress on all involved. Parents of the academically strong children feel skeptical and seem unhappy about the new pattern as they do not know now where their children stand in the academic performance. And this has generated huge disappointment among the parents and to some extent this is very true. But the fact of the matter is that the new pattern entails the best in children as it involves academics, co-curricular activities and personality development of students all on the same ground. And that’s why I strongly feel that parents should have no rhyme or reason to show disapproval of the new pattern.

In the new paradigm, the teachers are required to put in more efforts in preparing their   new lesson plans and designing formative activities. It augurs well for the teaching community that it is beginning to move away from the text book oriented teaching to more creative ways of involving students in the learning process. While teachers may find the supplement tasks quite engaging or even taxing, I am sure the teachers will enjoy their works seeing the rewards in the form of improvement of the children in all the domains of their personality.

The idea behind the CCE is to let students and parents know that it’s not just the knowledge that’s important, there has to be overall development during the school years of a student. As a teacher myself for many years, I welcome the transformation in educational system that CBSE has brought about in the recent years. The most elixir thing about this teaching profession is the inner satisfaction and a sense of joy and pride to see the budding flowers blossoming into a beautiful flower.

So instead of making grudges against the new CCE scheme, we should welcome the changes and work towards it for the betterment of the coming generation.

The writer Tenzin Norbu is an English teacher of Lamdon Model Senior Secondary School for the last 8 years.