From rote to reasoning: Schools prepare students for concept-based exam format

After the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 laid out a norm for shifting from rote learning to concept-based education, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Council for Indian School Certification Examinations (CISCE) had changed the pattern of question papers for students from this session.

Focusing mainly on Classes IX to XII, the schools have been preparing students to be ready to take 60 per cent indirect questions based on competency, high order thinking and concept understanding rather than direct questions. The school authorities have had to make quite a few changes in the teaching style and internal assessments that they have been taking.

Says Kanwaljit Singh Randhawa, Principal of MGN Public School, Adarsh Nagar, "We organised quite a few workshops for our teachers helping them get ready for the change. They were trained in framing questions which were not memory-based but those that based on checking the understanding, analysis and reasoning ability of the students. Though we are following it more for board classes X and XII, our students of Classes VIII onwards are already being prepared for the change. We give the students case studies and help them analyse the problem. We give them newspaper clips and ask them real life questions related to the topic which could be on the conduct of Parliament, various amendments made in the Acts and so on related to the topics they studied in civics syllabus".

Randhawa added, "Once our students are thorough with a concept, we give them a lot of practice questions which include assertion-reasoning type questions. This enhances their understanding further. We conduct three pre-board examination. We are already done with one on the board pattern. In the next two examination too, we shall follow the same pattern so that by the time the students appear in the board examination, their fear to handle such questions is already gone".

S Chauhan, Director-Principal of IVY World School, too said, "We too follow the practice to take three pre-board examination. From the very beginning, we had told the students to not to go for mugging up of topics for any direct answers and think of the real life situations where these could apply. But the very first step for this is to first be clear with the concepts after a thorough reading of NCERT books. We do not suggest them too many other books for practice. We tell them to follow the CBSE sample papers that are already available, practice worksheets given by their teachers carrying at least 60 per cent twisted questions. We train them to solve all such questions in the given time frame and keep away from any stress or phobia. Our teachers are giving extra time to all brilliant as well as the weak students".