National Education Policy: 2020 & Assessment Reform

National Education Policy 2020 has reformed Assessment Process at School and Higher Education Level. The New Education Policy has attempted to minimize the pressure of Year End Summative Examination/ Board Exams. Now the main focus of Assessment is ‘Assessment for Learning’ instead of ‘Assessment of Learning’. There is a shift from Rote-Memorization to Conceptual Understanding and Competency Learning. The following Assessment Reforms are recommended in the Policy document:

The aim of assessment will be to assess the competencies and higher-order Cognitive Skills like; Critical Thinking, Reasoning, Analyzing, Synthesizing, Evaluating, Judging, Argumentation, Creativity etc.
The competencies and higher-order skills will be assessed through Formative Assessment Process instead of Summative Assessment.
The Entrance Examination System will also be reformed so that there will be no need for extra Coaching Classes as Coaching Classes focuses only on Students’ Academic Achievement rather than their Holistic Development.
State School Exam will be conducted at Grade 3, 5 and 8 to test students’ Conceptual Understanding, Application and Core Competencies. However, at grade 3 level, focus of assessment will be only on literacy, numeracy and foundational skills. These results will be used for school system development.
In Board Examination System there will three major reforms; one; students will be able to choose subjects as per their individual interest; second only primarily core competencies will be examined and third two attempts will be provided to qualify the Board Examination in an academic year.
The National Assessment Centre for School Education (NACSE) will help all State Boards to adopt latest assessment tools and techniques.
The National Testing Agency will conduct all University Level Entrance Exams to maintain the quality with single focus to assess only Students’ Conceptual Clarity and Competencies.

Here only some major reforms expected by National Education Policy-2020 are shared. The detailed guidelines will be prepared by NCERT in NCF-2020.