Tamil Nadu government to put education into exams

From the new school year, students in Classes VI to IX in state board schools in the state will be assessed not on how well they remember their lessons, but on how well they understand them. The school education department has crowdsourced 1. 5 lakh questions from more than 1,000 teachers across the state for this. The plan is to create a repository of 10 lakh questions on all subjects.
The application-based questions will test the higher order thinking of students.The move away from rote learning will be part of formative assessments, class level tests, quarterly, half-yearly and annual exams. A teacher can customize question papers according to the exams.

“From slow learners to class toppers, the question papers can be customized to the learning levels of the children,” an official from the school education department said. (See graphic for example of how same question is tweaked for different levels).
Formative assessments will be based on online multiple choice-based questions (MCQs) while class tests or exams will have both MCQs and descriptive type questions. The exams will be held in pen and paper mode.
As part of a pilot study, students of Classes VI to IX in government schools in 10 districts of Chennai, Villupuram, Tiruvannamalai, Krishnagiri, Salem, Erode, Tirupur, Coimbatore, The Nilgiris, and Trichy will get the new p attern ofquestions for this year’s annual exam.
“The introduction of creative questions from Class VI onwards will help students understand concepts and their applications better. It would help them crack competitive exams including NEET and JEE,” the official added.
Currently, hardly 5% of questions for Class X, XII board exams are application oriented. The plan is to have at least 10% of such questions for Class VI to being with. Higher classes may have a higher percentage of application-oriented questions.
The school education department is also tying up with IIT Madras to analyse results of online tests so that remedial measures can be planned, an official said. “It will also help early identification of talent,” the official added.
In the last few months, the department conducted workshops for teachers to frame understanding-based and application-oriented questions.
While welcoming the move, teachers asked the department to provide resource material to equip students. “Students also should be encouraged to do more self-study to answer creative questions,” said P Patric Raymond, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Graduate Teachers Federation.
G J Manohar, principal of MCC Higher Secondary School in Chetpet, said classroom teaching should be changed to equip students to answer creative questions. “Students should be taught with experiments, puzzles, examples. This will help our students to do well in all Indialevel exams, ” he said.