The pros and cons of outsourced testing

With the introduction of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) procedures by the Central Board of Secondary Education and also by other state boards, it has been realized that assessment procedures in schools need to serve dual purposes–summative and formative. Teachers need to assess students’ learning levels continuously to decipher students’ learning difficulties, provide timely feedback and remediation. Thus, assessment demands made on teachers’ workload has increased immensely. Therefore, teachers spend a lot of their planning time in preparing assessment modules for their students. This leads to stress and burnout among teachers. A Detailed Assessment Report (NGOs and private organizations) issued by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Government of India, observed that usage of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based assessment services could be an asset for successful designing, enabling, and execution of CCE which is a current challenge to the school system. Therefore, outsourcing test preparation to external bodies was considered by school authorities so that teachers’ time is redirected to pedagogical …