In view of the prevailing situation, the State Board of School Education (BOSE) has decided to reschedule the annual examination for class 10th and 12th in Kashmir division.According to a notification issued by BOSE, the examination for both 10th and 12th classes in Kashmir division would be conducted in second week of November 2016.Pertinently, as per the previous schedule the examination for class 10th was to be conducted in the first week of October 2016 while for class 12th the examination was to be conducted in the third week of October 2016.“We shall have to complete the process of conduct of examinations and declaration of results well in time so that the students can prepare for and appear in various competitive examinations including NEET and JEE for admission to various professional courses, both within and outside the State,” Minister for Education, Mr Naeem Akhtar said.Pertinently, in a significant decision, the State Government has also decided to review the policy of ‘No-Detention’ at the elementary level to check the deterioration in the quality of education.
The State’s Education Department has decided that, henceforth, SIE will conduct T1 and T2 exams from class 5th to 9th with external evaluation while BOSE will conduct T2 exam of class 11th. However, the evaluation for all these examinations will be supervised by SIE while the cluster Principals will supervise assessment, evaluation and remedial teaching.According to senior officials of the Education Department, during the course of discussions on the “New Education Policy” the stakeholders opined that the present system of allowing the child to reach class 9th without any detention irrespective of performance in examination has resulted in lack of motivation to perform amongst students along with poor attendance and indiscipline. The stakeholders argued that the No- Detention policy has proved to be discouraging even for teachers in the absence of evaluation of their performance resulting in lack of quantification of their achievements.
According to these officials, also it was felt that the “No-Detention” policy has been misunderstood to imply ‘no examination’ when on the other hand it is concomitant upon proper and rigorous implementation of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) which, as a diagnostic tool necessitates both, assessment for learning and assessment of learning.In view of the observations of the stakeholders, the State Government recognizes that a balance has to be struck between the concerns regarding quality and learning levels and children’s motivation and stress. Accordingly, it has been decided to review the implementation of CCE, with particular focus on regular assessment, evaluation and remedial teaching; and to introduce detention from class 5th to 8th - on the basis of performance in T1 and T2.However, as per the new policy, the student will be detained on provisional basis with arrangement for special remedial teaching of 2-3 months during vacations/beginning of next session followed by reassessment by SIEs for grading appropriate competencies and in case of inability to meet the qualification criteria in such a reassessment too, the student will be detained in that very particular class.