:  General Concern

It is true that post independence policy pronunciations have put access to educational facilities as the priority. NPE 1986 went further and included the need for providing education of ‘Comparable quality’. This is an issue, which has a direct learning an equity issue. For that very reason now quality dimensions in a situation of such complex plurality our state has acquired very significant role.

‘Monitoring for quality must be seen as a process that enables and provides constructive feed back in relation to the teaching, learning process within specific classroom contexts’ (National Curriculum framework 2005).

These have been opinions expressed regarding availability of data on classroom evaluation at school level. With the introduction of MLL based learning in Karnataka formats were devised and introduced for capturing performance of students. These are competency based. However, there is no data available at state level. Efforts of base line studies under DPEP and Janashala were confined to certain blocks and districts only.

Hence the need for assessment of schools at state level has been stressed in many of the initiatives of the state. Edu-vision document of 2003 envisaged establishment of a separate organisation and charge it with the development of effective systems for assessing schools. This was also listed as a priority area in the Departmental Medium Term Fiscal plan (DMTFP) (2003-04 to 2006-07). Justification for such an assessment organisation also stems from the issue of accountability of the system. Accountability should form the basis for funding of specific programs.

‘Quality concern, a very feature of systematic reform implies the system’s capacity to reform itself by enhancing its ability to remedy its own weaknesses and to develop new capabilities’- (Curriculum Framework-2005).