India's 10-year education charade: why CCE failed 200M children

CCE was the fourth classroom orthodoxy in a sequence that began with constructivism and whole-language teaching methods, followed by "joyful learning" without burden. If any burden on a child is the enemy, assessment is its most visible instrument. Once learning without burden became the moral ground, examinations had no room. CCE replaced them. "No detention" – not holding a child back to repeat a year – followed naturally.

The case against detention is strong, Behar acknowledged. There is almost no evidence that repeating a year improves learning, and much evidence on how failing a child hurts development. When the 2009 RTE Act made CCE compulsory and abolished exams and detention up to class 8, it seemed right to many observers, including Behar.

"But this is a story of how an insight turns into dogma once a kernel of truth is allowed to metastasize," he wrote.

What the 2024 rules change

The National Curricular Framework of 2023 describes what should have been built from the start. The 2024 rules draw on it: enable CCE within classroom processes without mechanizing it. Alongside, assess through formal exams, external where needed, at classes 3, 5 and 8. If a child has not learned, oblige the school to teach her again.

The choice was never between assessing a child and protecting her, Behar argued. The orthodoxy asked people to believe. It did not ask them to see what was actually happening, or what was possible, or to do the hard work of balancing principles within a frame of reality.

"A generation was schooled while we protected an abstraction from what was plainly visible in every classroom," Behar wrote. "The idea suffered no loss but millions of children are still paying for it."