A learning culture

Like schools, higher education needs creative solutions

The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) offers a creative corrective to the weaknesses in the school-education system. It seeks to reduce the curriculum load in each subject to lessen rote learning and encourage critical thinking. To this end, it has suggested holding board exams twice in an academic year so that students can be judged on a “best of two” results system rather than be subjected to the tensions of a single high-stakes outcome. In the long run, the idea is to allow “on-demand” board exams for students to appear in subjects that they have completed and feel ready for. At