Holistic Progress Card: How NCERT is planning to change student assessment

The New Education Policy (NEP), established in 2020, proposed redesigning the assessment system of school students in India. The policy had called for a "holistic progress card (HPC)" to track the progress made by a student throughout the year.

The policy said, "The progress card will be a holistic, 360-degree, multidimensional report that reflects in great detail the progress as well as the uniqueness of each learner in the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains."

"It will include self-assessment and peer assessment, and progress of the child in project-based and inquiry-based learning, quizzes, role plays, group work, portfolios, etc., along with teacher assessment," it added.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has recently made these HPCs public. They have been devised by NCERT's standard-setting body, Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH).

Three HPCs have yet to be made public, for the foundational stage (Classes 1 and 2), preparatory stage (Classes 3 to 5) and middle stage (Classes 6 to 8). For the secondary stage, HPCs are likely to be revealed soon.

Unlike earlier, these HPCs will now have details like a student's hobbies, favourite food, and festivals.

The description of a student will now be based on three parameters, Awareness, Sensitivity and Creativity. Moreover, there will be three descriptors, Stream, Mountain, and Sky, to mark each parameter.

If a child's performance is low, it will be marked "Stream". For moderate and high progress, they will be marked "Mountain" and "Sky" respectively.

The samples of HPCs made public by the NCERT showed that there will be new parameters to measure the all-around progress of a child. The HPC for the foundational stage had domains like "Physical development", "Socio-emotional development", "Cognitive development", and "Aesthetic and cultural development".

For the preparatory stage, the assessment, in addition to language and mathematics, will include standards like visual arts, the world around us, theatre, dance, and movement.

For the middle stage, there are new subjects by the names Literary-R1, Literary-R2, and Literary-R3, in addition to Mathematical, Scientific, and Social.

In the new HPCs for the middle stage, the students will be asked to fill their "Ambition Card". It would need them to provide details like "5 skills I need to achieve my ambition" and "Subject I need to focus on".

For the preparatory stage, the self-assessment would revolve around points like "I can understand how my friends feel", "I think I do well at school", and "I respect everyone's opinions".

Now, the assessment will include feedback from not only the teachers but also from a student's classmates and parents.

In the preparatory and middle stages, the HPCs will have a separate section for "Peer Feedback". It will ask for emotional and cognitive details like how "motivated" the student was during an activity, how "curious" they were and how many "calculated risks" they were able to take.

It will also ask for recommendations on what a student needs to work on. 

In the preparatory and middle stages, parents will also be asked to give their feedback on their child.

In the preparatory stage, a section "Your Child Matters!" will ask the parents to provide a rating for 11 points, including "My child finds the classroom and school a welcoming and safe space", "My child is making good progress as per their grade", "My child respects everyone's opinions" and "When someone is sad, my child can make them feel better".

In the middle stage, the HPC would contain a "Parent-Teacher Partnership Card", which would have a subsection to highlight a child's weak areas. It would be titled "At school, my child needs support with:". It would also have a declaration with the heading, "Based on my discussion with the teacher, I will support my child at home by:".