Curricular reform in schools: the importance of evaluation

Abstract

Evaluation plays a pivotal role in deciding what the learners learn and what the teachers teach in schools. The paper reports a study of English‐language teaching conducted in Delhi State of India that sought to examine the assumption that a change in an evaluation pattern can trigger curricular reform. Did concomitant changes take place in the teaching and testing of English at the upper‐primary stage when the Central Board of Secondary Education introduced changes in the courses of study and the examinations in English language at the end of class X (age 15 +), the occasion of the first high‐stakes public examination in India? This expectation of change was confirmed in the findings of this study, which may apply to other curricular areas and speak to any school system ready to implement reforms in their instructional practices.

Notes

Mamta Agrawal, professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Extension in the National Council of Educational Research and Training, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi–110016, India (e‐mail: [email protected]), has research interests in educational evaluation, English‐language testing, and teacher education. Her publications include the Handbook of Evaluation in English (New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training, 1988) and several books on communicative tests of reading and writing, reading comprehension exercises and oral exercises in English for the use of English‐language teachers at the school level.

The ‘A’ course in English is for students who study English from class I; the ‘B’ course is meant for those students who start studying English from class VI.

In India the so‐called ‘public’ schools are privately administered.

Most government schools and aided schools in Delhi offer ‘B’ Course in English. Only a few have recently switched over to the ‘A’ course.

Copies of question papers referred to in this article are available from Central Board of Secondary Education, 2 Community Centre, Preet Vihar, Delhi‐110092, India.

In the structural approach to English‐language teaching, the form of language is given more importance than functions. Structuralists believe that graded and repetitive sentence drills offer an excellent system of language learning (McArthur 1983: 100). Except for the CBSE English ‘A’ course and English courses run by three or four state boards, English‐language teaching in India is still based on the structural approach.

I collected data from eight schools: three government schools, one aided school, two private schools, and two Kendriya Vidyalayas. One private school and one Kendriya Vidyalaya did not supply their tests. Hence, six tests for each of class VI, VII, and VIII (a total of 18) were analysed for this study.

A detailed text is intended for in‐depth study of the thematic content and the language content. A non‐detailed text (a supplementary reader) is for extensive study. The test questions asked on a non‐detailed text are generally global in nature.

The passages given here are incomplete. Selections have been extracted to illustrate the comparison between the school paper and CBSE's paper.

A ‘wh‐question’ uses such words as ‘what’, ‘which’, ‘why’, ‘where’, ‘whom’, etc. Except for ‘why’, wh‐questions are factual questions that usually test the recall of information.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

MAMTA AGRAWAL

Mamta Agrawal, professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Extension in the National Council of Educational Research and Training, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi–110016, India (e‐mail: [email protected]), has research interests in educational evaluation, English‐language testing, and teacher education. Her publications include the Handbook of Evaluation in English (New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training, 1988) and several books on communicative tests of reading and writing, reading comprehension exercises and oral exercises in English for the use of English‐language teachers at the school level.