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Rote-based exams risk trapping India’s students in low-skill futures. Shifting to competency-based assessment is key to deeper learning, equity, and employability
For decades, India’s school assessment system has stayed firm in high-stakes, end-of-year, standardised examinations, aimed at scoring and comparison. However, evidence has shown limitations of rote exams, which result in poor learning outcomes for children. For instance, studies in India have shown that 70 percent of teaching time is spent on traditional lecture and rote learning methods. This shallow learning may help test recall, but does not support critical thinking. For example, while a large proportion of youth can recite definitions or perform a practised procedure, they cannot apply knowledge to slightly different problems. As automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshape employer demands, graduating students who lack real skills are often trapped in low-skill, low-paying jobs, creating a cycle of limited opportunity and flat lifetime earnings. India’s youth unemployment, alongside unfilled vacancies, reflects low employability due to education-industry disconnect, where academic programmes focus too much on theory and exam scores over real-world, future-ready and socio-emotional skills.
As automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshape employer demands, graduating students who lack real skills are often trapped in low-skill, low-paying jobs, creating a cycle of limited opportunity and flat lifetime earnings.
In comparison, a growing body of evidence from both developed and developing countries suggests that transitioning to competency-based education, with assessments tied to demonstrated skills, can yield more profound learning outcomes. Experiences from countries undergoing similar transitions provide valuable insights for India. For example, in Rwanda, the Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) approach resulted in students becoming more engaged in class, showing better problem-solving skills, and demonstrating a stronger understanding of mathematics concepts. Similarly, a review of CBC reforms in the United States (US) and South Korea found that students in competency-based programmes showed greater problem-solving ability, critical thinking, and conceptual understanding compared to those in traditional settings. These students also exhibited higher self-efficacy and engagement with their learning, i.e. signs of “learning how to learn”, which supports lifelong learning, rather than just memorising for tests. Traditional, rote-based, exam-oriented education also tends to leave weaker students behind, widening the gap with their more academically successful peers. According to the World Bank, “the learning crisis amplifies inequality,” limiting the life chances of poor and rural youth who “most need the boost that a good education can offer.”
Traditional, rote-based, exam-oriented education also tends to leave weaker students behind, widening the gap with their more academically successful peers.
Recognising these challenges, India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 calls for a transformation of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessments toward competency-based approaches. Regarding assessments, it implies a holistic appraisal, which assesses not just knowledge, but also skills, attitudes, and values, which are required to mobilise knowledge and demonstrate competency.
The National Education Policy of 1986 first introduced Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) to reduce rote learning in Indian schools. However, the shift occurred only within the 2000s when the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) introduced grades instead of marks, semester systems, and a 20 percent internal assessment weightage, including the addition of case-based questions. NEP 2020 provided the strongest policy mandate for change, building the scope for CBA tools such as 360° holistic progress cards, which replaced marksheets, alongside standardised assessments like PARAKH. It also prompted reform in board exams, which have become modularised, low-stakes, and offered twice yearly, with a ‘best-of-two’ option for students; they include objective MCQs as well as descriptive questions.
Despite these policy initiatives, implementation challenges such as uneven implementation, system inertia, and capacity-related gaps persist. Many schools lack the resources, time, and support required for sustained pedagogical change. This is reinforced by variation in mindset and apprehension among both teachers and parents about moving away from marks-driven, textbook-based examinations. Most teachers continue to focus on completing the syllabus and coaching for past papers, but lack proficiency in designing rubrics, performance tasks, and competency-based questions. Their professional development remains limited, with insufficient connection to classroom realities. This is compounded by a lack of shared understanding among teachers, students, and education administrators about what ‘CBE’ actually means in practice, so reforms are often reduced to cosmetic changes in question paper patterns rather than genuine shifts in classroom assessment. Thus, without systemic alignment between curriculum, textbooks, teacher preparation, and classroom practices, CBA becomes superficial, changing question formats rather than redesigning instructional approaches.
Without urgent assessment reforms that prioritise competency, equity and timely feedback, a generation of learners is at risk of getting locked into low-skill, low-opportunity futures.
Furthermore, the sheer diversity and scale of schools in India create structural barriers. A broad spectrum of school and student backgrounds means any uniform reform interacts with differential access to resources, language support, and learning opportunities. This diversity and volume make it challenging to standardise implementation, monitor quality, and offer sustained handholding at scale, so well-endowed CBSE schools remain islands of reforms rather than systemic transformation across the system.
Along with this, poor learning outcomes continue to be an enduring challenge in Indian education. PARAKH 2024 shows that 36 percent children in Grade III cannot read a basic text, and 40 percent cannot solve basic mathematical problems, with wide interstate and inter-district variation that masks these averages. Paired with the findings in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2021 and 2017, it reveals that progress over the past several years has been nearly flat. The Comprehensive Modular Survey on Education (NSS 80th round) highlights heavy reliance on private coaching, increasing to over 40 percent at the secondary level.
Taken together, these trends signal a critical need to realign teaching with foundational competencies, providing targeted support to learners who are lagging, to prevent current gaps from hardening into lifelong inequalities. Without urgent assessment reforms that prioritise competency, equity and timely feedback, a generation of learners is at risk of getting locked into low-skill, low-opportunity futures.
Achieving the ambitions of NEP 2020 and NCF-SE 2023 requires a deliberate shift from compliance-driven implementation to shared ownership among all stakeholders. Assessment reforms will only take root when teachers, school leaders, parents, students, administrators, and researchers are meaningfully engaged, supported with clear roles, and equipped with sustained capacity-building and resources. CBA should be the core focus of all in-service teacher trainings, with exemplar videos and model assessment tasks in Indian languages, demonstrating how real teachers check competencies in multilingual, resource-poor classrooms. Professional development must be continuous, practice-embedded, with space for peer learning, co-design of assessment tasks, and reflection on classroom evidence. It should deepen teachers’ grasp of CBA, including rubric design, formative feedback, and use of data for remedial education.
Second, it is crucial to integrate specific competencies into the curriculum, textbooks, and other teaching-learning resources to build a shared understanding of processes and outcomes. NCERT and SCERTs should publish grade-wise, subject-wise competency ladders (what a child should be able to do at each stage). All new textbooks, workbooks, and teacher guides must be explicitly mapped to these competencies, not just chapters or topics. Every learning outcome in the curricular documents should have example items or tasks that demonstrate what meeting a particular competency looks like.
Third, there is also a need to redesign classroom assessment tools for teachers, utilising simple competency checklists and item banks tailored to each grade. They should be provided with ideas on continuous, low-stakes assessments such as quick concept checks, reasoning tasks, portfolio reviews, and hands-on activities aligned with competencies.
Professional development must be continuous, practice-embedded, with space for peer learning, co-design of assessment tasks, and reflection on classroom evidence.
Fourth, the momentum for board exam reforms for Class 10 and 12 examinations should be sustained through changes in question paper design, increasing the share of application-oriented, case-based, and analytical questions, including mixed formats of short responses, data interpretation, and scenario-based items. This should be supported by reform in internal assessments, where schools are asked to evaluate projects, portfolios or lab work. It is also important to work towards reforming entrance tests and Central University Entrance Test (CUET) exams to assess core competencies, rather than syllabus-heavy recall. This will make the overall system more fair, more meaningful, and more aligned with the skills students actually need in life and work.
Reforms must bring parents and communities into the conversation. Public discourses, school-level orientations, and straightforward, jargon-free reports can foster understanding of holistic and competency-based assessments, alleviate anxiety around new formats such as open-book exams, and promote supportive home learning practices rather than an exclusive reliance on coaching.
Finally, assessment reform must be viewed as a learning system in its own right. Independent, phased research and cross-state comparisons should continuously study what works, for whom, and under what conditions, drawing on global good practices but grounding adaptations locally. Evidence from these studies should inform policy revisions, teacher education, and resource design, ensuring that assessment remains responsive to a rapidly changing, knowledge- and innovation-driven society.
With a decisive shift towards CBA, India can build an assessment architecture that truly reflects what students understand and can do. The next decade presents an opportunity to transform exams from measuring memory to assessing meaningful learning.
Arpan Tulsyan is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy, Observer Research Foundation.
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Arpan Tulsyan is a Senior Fellow at ORF’s Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED). With 16 years of experience in development research and policy advocacy, Arpan ...
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