On your mark, get grade from next year

COIMBATORE: In a major policy shift in the school education sector, the Tamil Nadu Government has decided to move away from the learning-by-rote concept to the CBSE’s Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system. The process, involving drastic changes in the examination evaluation pattern, will begin next year for classes I to VIII and from 2013-14 for classes IX and X. Also, a grading system will replace marks in examinations.The move came based on on the recommendations of a state-level expert group headed by the Director of Teacher Education, Research and Training.Explaining the need for the paradigm shift, School Education Secretary D Sabitha, in an order, said, “The present testing of the learner, based only on memory is one-dimensional. It does not test whether the student is able to interpret or apply the knowledge gathered in any other frame of reference. Students are not taught to analyse, order, organise, reason and find purpose and direction with the information that they receive without choice.”