The Education Ministry’s shift to Continuous Formative Assessment (CFA) for classes PP to III that requires to keep fewer students adds more to the pressure with the government’s decision to enrol more students in class PP. But the said multiple approaches will be used to make sure the combination doesn’t fail.
This was said during the Meet the Press session today.
Raising concerns, the Prime Minister said the combination of starting CFA and enrolling more children in class PP is quite contradictory. However, the government will bring in measures that will ensure that every child is admitted and the quality of education is not compromised.
“We may not increase that many classrooms at once. So we will adjust a little bit on the existing classrooms, wherever it’s required a few extra classrooms will come. We may not be able to recruit all the XYZ number of teachers at once. But we will recruit some at the same time we will also come up with teacher assistants so that the teachers whose job is to teach and non-teaching activities might be offloaded to teacher assistants. All these issues can be sorted out with different measures,” said Dr Lotay Tshering, the Prime Minister.
Lyonchhen added that the pressure on class PP is only this year and the load will be less in the following years. He also suggested if sections of classes five and six could be clubbed together creating extra rooms for class PP. This, in turn, will help take in more children. Meanwhile, the Education Minister said, despite pressures on PP admissions, the Ministry will ensure that every child who is five years old is admitted.
“The parents might not get admission for their children in the right place or nearby their own house. They have to travel a little bit further, they have to make a few adjustments. But then we will make sure that government will accommodate almost all the children who have reached the age of five,” said Jai Bir Rai, the Education Minister.
In addition, the Prime Minister said Bhutan’s shift from summative assessment to formative assessment should not be rushed.
“Formative assessment is a continuous assessment. It’s an assessment on a daily basis and at the end of the year there will be no exams. So if we do not maintain a good ratio and teacher aren’t able to cope, we can always take and go a middle path. CFA will be more at the same time, there can also be a quarterly or half-yearly exam so that we phase out from exam based to totally formative over the next five or six years. Because this policy is to be here with us forever. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to start and end in 2020,” said Lyonchhen.
As per the Education Ministry’s preliminary assessment, about 7,000 students have to be admitted in class PP across the country.
Sonam Pem
