Hey KD ! :)
Specially pointing out something on NDP. I would like to comment two points about this post:
1) In current mess, NDP doesn’t matter much. But in “pedagogy” it is a crime. The didactic gaps that are left untouched while “jumping” from one class to another generally bundle up as a thick mess. The gaps that generally clear up with age and long-exposure is made impossible with such a decision. Moreover, long periods of absence due to farming, health, financial etc. further complicate the issue.
* This also gives under-performing teachers, a lame excuse, that they get to teach children of poor merit. [ I actually encountered such teachers many times in Haryana]
2) The data of learning outcomes could get very foggy. LSA’s work is foggy, and perhaps the least foggiest, among other assessment groups and of course govt. schools internals (because they are derived from textbooks).
— The language standard of assessments is fcking up the whole data —
And here is one thing, that I found that nobody talks about, because people who make papers, people who implement and analyse the results and people who actually teach those children are never the same.
Most kids fail to get the language of assessments right.
This is precisely because the language in which question is asked and the language in which a kid processes information is very very different.
This is because a kid processes information in words and “non-word-constructs” closest to its mother tongue and “image-ideas”. Meanwhile the assessment or the textbook guy rights in a straight standard language lacking the cusps of mother tongue or “image-ideas”. This makes assessment of every subject, an assessment of comprehension in a mildly foreign language.
When I went deeper into this whole thing of language, and how the kids are really attending to questions, I realized that there is no way a kid can do well in exams for at least 4–6 years starting from kindergarten. A 10 yr. old kid essentially “seems” like 6 yr. old if the questions have “more” words in it.
On the contrary, if the language is outrightly removed, as sometimes we do in maths questions, the difference between 10 yr. old kid and 6 yr. old kid widens, and we see a clear growing up.
I am trying out this study in a school in coming week too, lets see how it goes.