Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)

After a three-month legal drama which went right up to the Supreme Court, the Karnataka Secondary Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB) commenced ‘annual assessments’ on March 27 for 1.9 million class V and VIII students in 56,157 KSEAB-affiliated schools statewide.

Since December 13 last year, when the state’s education ministry issued a circular announcing “annual assessments” in March for all class V and VIII students of state board schools, there’s been controversy and uncertainty over this proposal. Despite the circular declaring the purpose of the ‘assessment’ is to “derive measurable learning outcomes” of children and emphasising that no child will be failed/detained, parents and schools associations have equated it with exams and opposed it, citing inadequate time for students to prepare and therefore causing stress to young children.

On the other hand, education officials insist that assessing children’s learning outcomes periodically is in line with recommendations made in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Moreover, the circular highlighted that s.16 of the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009, which initially prohibited examinations and mandated compulsory yearly promotion of classes I-VIII children, was amended by the BJP government at the Centre in 2019 to allow exams and detention of students who fail twice. However they stress that no student will be detained following assessment.

In January, the Registered Unaided Private Schools Association (RUPSA), which has 13,000 member schools, filed a petition in the Karnataka high court challenging the December 13 circular. On March 10, a single judge bench accepted RUPSA’s arguments and ordered cancellation of the assessment. However, the state government appealed the verdict and a special bench of the Karnataka high court headed by Justice G. Narender upheld the appeal and gave the government the go-ahead to schedule the assessment for March 27. Subsequently, RUPSA filed an appeal in the Supreme Court, which dismissed the petition on March 27 stating that “Let’s not interfere with the high court order. The high court knows what is best in that state”.

D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Managements of Private Schools in Karnataka (KAMS), which has 4,000 member schools statewide, and is a rival organisation of RUPSA, welcomes the apex court’s decision. “As per the amended RTE Act, we are in favour of annual exams for class V and VIII children because learning outcomes dropped drastically during the Covid pandemic when children were out of school. There’s a need to rigorously assess children’s learning outcomes to provide appropriate remedial education. The whole controversy around the exams is unnecessary,” says Shashi Kumar.

However Lokesh Talikatte, president of RUPSA, which challenged the state government’s circular, insists that the government has made a huge mistake in going ahead with exams. “BJP governments at the Centre and Karnataka have ignored s.30 of the RTE Act. While the Act encourages schools to conduct continuous and comprehensive evaluation to assess children’s learning outcomes, it specifically disallows board exams in elementary education. The state government’s class V and VIII ‘annual assessments’ are like board exams that will put children under tremendous pressure to score high marks, and result in more students dropping out after class VIII,” says Talikatte.

Meanwhile with the state all set for the legislative assembly election scheduled on May 10, the incumbent BJP government’s last-minute announcement, and later mismanagement of the class V and VIII ‘annual assessments’ is another strike against the BJP for its poor education track record over the past four years. Prime minister Modi’s frequent visits to the state — where he addresses public rallies in Hindi — is unlikely to calm the big anti-incumbency wave that’s building up in the state.