An obsession of perfect report cards is producing a generation of hollow understanding. Aneesh Bangia emphasises on how we need to rethink assessments and its purpose

Suppose you go to a doctor. He checks your pulse and blood pressure. Then, he asks you to go home.

This is how assessments are conducted in most of the schools. Teachers take an assessment after teaching a topic. They evaluate the answers and find out a score or a grade. Sometimes, teachers generate a detailed report with colourful graphs and tables. But, teachers move on to teaching the text topic after that even if only 20 per cent of the children understood the topic.

When we grow up, we ask ourselves: why do we not remember anything we learnt in school? Well, because we understood everything partially.

What is the point of an assessment?

First, we need to realise that the schools are designed for the benefit of children. If the assessments do not help children in any way, then the assessments are utterly pointless.

So, we should ask ourselves: how are our assessments benefiting the children?

An assessment that produces only a grade is like your doctor handing you your blood report and asking you to go home. An assessment that provides only feedback is like a doctor giving you a prescription and then not bothering if your health improves.

When we are never ok with such a doctor, how are we ok with such a school system?

Let me underscore this: The purpose of assessments is to improve children.

Move beyond reports

An obsession on producing report cards is creating a generation that is losing out on the opportunity to learn anything in depth. An obsession of report cards is producing a generation of hollow understanding.

Let us move beyond ticks and crosses, scores and grades, bar graphs and pie charts and focus on the only thing that matters: improvement in learning.

If children do not improve, then assessments are pointless.

Delusion of learning

When teachers conduct an assessment and get a report, they tend to assume that they have done their job. The assessment and the data causes a delusion of learning. In fact, action begins after an assessment.

We hear a lot of educationists talking about improving the accuracy of the reports and making the post-assessment feedback more detailed. We hear very few educationists talking about the work needed to improve children after the assessment.

Why? Because making reports and feedback more accurate is easy. Taking action is hard.

Time constraints

One of the common concerns of most teachers is that they do not have the time to teach a topic for a long time.

Here are a few tips for teachers:

• Allocate time judiciously: Teachers can allot more time for topics that are more conceptual. For topics that are more knowledge-based and do not form a strong foundation for learning a future topic, the teachers can ask children to understand the basics of the topic on their own and then conduct a discussion in the class.
• Make a effort to teach less: Teachers should re-look at their lesson plans and reduce over explaining a topic. Instead, teachers should enable children to learn on their own.
• Strong understanding is an investment: If children understand a topic well, it becomes much easier for children to understand future topics better. Teachers can allocate more time on the topics so that they have to spend less time later.

Bias for action

Teachers should remember that children may not be motivated to improve on their own. Teachers will have to take the responsibility of re-teaching a concept. They may have to design a new teaching strategy or plan extra time for remediation. They may have to divide their class in separate groups and plan different activities for each group.

If teachers can re-focus their efforts from reports towards taking action after an assessment, then we can create a generation of people who are more confident and innovative.

The writer is Co-founder, Open Door Education