NWAC Hosts 48th COBSE Conference on 'De-stressing Examination'

• De-stressing the examination process is an important part of the National Education Policy, 2019

• More than 100 delegates from across India, USA, Bhutan and Nepal attended the conference

• NWAC has more than a hundred thousand hours experience in classroom assessment.

The conference was attended by more than 100 representatives from across India, USA, Nepal and Bhutan. The delegates at the conference represented national and state boards. Dr. Kem Hussain, Senior Vice President, NWAC (Cognia), Dr Annette Bohling, Chief Certification Officer, NWAC (Cognia), Mrs Asano Sekhose, President COBSE & amp; Chairman, Nagaland Board of School Education and Professor Siddharth Pandey, Chairman Organizing Committee (IIT Mains 2020) were among the prominent speakers who engaged the eminent gathering. 

In his inaugural address, Chief Guest Dr. Ved Prakash said, “The biggest challenge in front of educators today is to come up with a curriculum that has a futuristic orientation. The education boards do not only have the responsibility of certifying students, but they also have the responsibility to prepare the children for tomorrow’s world.” Education that is being provided today is going to impact the future, a future that is not known to anyone. “Students must not be educated on age-old patterns rather they should be made future-ready,” added Dr. Ved Prakash.

Dr. Annette Bohling explained the organizational structure of Cognia which owns NWAC. In her presentation, she went on to explain the need and process of accreditation for higher education. “Student test results are the outcome but while accreditation we look at teaching process, economic value and how & what the child is learning. About 50% of the students are not engaged in learning and around 90% of the students don’t use technology,” said, Dr Bohling.

The Northwest Accreditation Commission (NWAC) is one of the oldest and most prestigious accrediting agencies formed in 1917, through a bill passed by the Federal Government of The United States of America. It is now one of the 3 accrediting divisions of AdvancED, which is the largest accrediting agency in the world with over 40,000 accredited schools in 75 plus countries. 

Northwest Accreditation Commission has a Regional Office in India. The Regional Office supports schools in preparation for securing AdvancED accreditation and also affiliates schools to offer the American school-level program known as the NWAC American High School Program. “Examination stress is a global phenomenon, the need is to shift from the examination of learning to examination for learning,” added Dr. Bohling.   

Dr. Sanyam Bhardwaj, Controller of Examinations, CBSE gave a detailed presentation of the way CBSE is bringing about a change in the evaluation and examination process to reduce the stress. “We are taking into cognizance the observation of students and teachers from across the country & abroad to make the evaluation scheme uniform. We are taking due care in creating the marking scheme and provide training to evaluators to remove ambiguity or errors in the evaluation process. A dual evaluation process has been adopted by the board to reduce the scope of error.” Various other initiatives are being taken by the Board to de-stress the examination process. “We are working on reducing the encumbrances faced by the students- from special exams for sportspersons to ease in the re-checking process the board is trying to rectify all the pain points," added Dr. Bharadwaj.

The event concluded with a positive note with NWAC coming out with various ideas to make school examinations less stressful and is determined to implement the ideas in the future.