Competencies in School

Illustration: ChatGPT

For decades, Indian schooling has treated learning as accumulation: more chapters, thicker textbooks, heavier bags, longer answers. Success was measured not by what a learner can do with knowledge, but by how much of it can be reproduced in a three-hour exam.

The new education policy introduced five years ago [NEP 2020] marks an important conceptual shift. At least on paper, it raises a radical question: What should a learner actually be capable of doing at the end of schooling?

Competency-based learning shifts the focus of education from accumulation of facts to acquisition of skills.

A competency is not a topic completed or a chapter taught, but a demonstrable combination of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values.

This approach is a paradigm shift or a quantum leap.

Very little has changed in our schools in the last five years after NEP was put into practice because such changes take time. Secondly, most of our schools are not equipped for the major changes and many of our teachers are yet to realise the ultimate objective of the framework change or its nitty-gritty.

Let me take my own subject, English, as an example.

To say a student “knows English” is vague. To say a student can listen attentively, express ideas clearly, negotiate meaning, and respond appropriately in real-life contexts using English – that is competency in English.

NEP claims to demand a substantial shift:

·      from learning to conceptual understanding

·      from content=heavy curricula to skill-based education

·      from summative exams to formative assessment

But little, too little, has been achieved in this regard though almost half a decade has passed after NEP 2020 was implemented.

In many classrooms, competency is still reduced to a checklist:

ü projects done

ü activities concluded

ü outcomes recorded in lesson plans and other documents

Genuine competency cannot be hurried or simulated. It requires time for practice, room for error, meaningful feedback, and, very important, trust in the learner’s pace.

When a syllabus must be “finished,” competencies become decorative words in policy documents.  

A common misunderstanding is that competency-based learning means more activities. The truth is that a single well-designed task can develop multiple competencies at once: language proficiency, reasoning, empathy, confidence…

Since I have been an English teacher, let me again take an example from English. I mentioned Pearl S Buck’s short story The Enemy in an earlier post because it’s part of the class 12 English syllabus of CBSE. What normally happens in a class is to discuss the story focusing on its plot, characters, and themes. CBSE’s question papers ask questions based on those three elements. That’s simple basic discussion of the story and it has nothing to do with any advanced competencies.

A student should be able to analyse how complex characters develop over the course of the story and how their conflicting motivations drive the theme of universal humanity vs national loyalty. This story originally published in 1942, in the context the WWII. But its theme has the same, if not more, relevance today. Can a student analyse that? Does a student note how Sadao’s professional ethics as a doctor outweighs his personal prejudice. Can a student contrast Sadao’s actions with those of his servants? Connect the story’s moral dilemma to modern-day ethical as well as nationalist conflicts?

Ultimately, the story should have a deep impact on the student’s thinking and attitudes. That’s how literature develops the student’s competencies. Other subjects do it in their own ways.

To conclude, competency-based learning prepares students not just for exams, but for life beyond classrooms. A student may forget Dr Sadao but carry his humanity in their heart. That is when education becomes meaningful.

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