The Secondary Stage is a crucial phase in a learner’s journey. At this stage, students connect knowledge with real-life situations. They also begin to think about careers, skills and responsible citizenship.In line with NEP 2020 and NCF-SE 2023, PARAKH promotes holistic and competency-based assessment. It encourages schools to move beyond marks-based evaluation. The Holistic Progress Card records students’ growth through self-reflection, group projects, inquiry-based tasks, classroom interactions, life skills and competency profiles.PARAKH also works towards equivalence of boards across India. This means maintaining comparable academic standards among different school boards. It promotes fairness in curriculum, question paper design, marking schemes, learning outcomes and assessment practices. PARAKH supports this through Question Paper Templates, Equivalence Questionnaires and guidelines for balanced question papers.At the Secondary Stage, PARAKH Kaushal Sarvekshan also becomes important. It can help assess students’ readiness for skill-based learning. It can also examine their preparedness for vocational choices, employability and practical problem-solving.The focus of assessment is gradually shifting from memorisation to understanding, reasoning and application. From Classes 9 to 12, the balance between formative and summative assessment also changes. This prepares students for classroom-based learning as well as board-level assessment.Overall, PARAKH aims to make assessment fair, flexible, transparent and learner-centred. It supports students in becoming reflective, confident and future-ready individuals.

The National Education Policy 2020 reoriented the purpose of assessment in Indian school education. It called for a clear movement away from rote memorisation, content-heavy examinations and narrow measures of achievement. NEP placed assessment within a broader vision of learning. Assessment is now seen as continuous, competency-based and developmentally responsive. It should support learning, inform pedagogy and recognise the holistic growth of every learner. The Middle Stage is one of the most important phases in school education. It covers learners between the ages of 11 and 14 years. This stage usually includes Classes 6 to 8. It comes after the Preparatory Stage and before the Secondary Stage. It is a bridge between activity-based learning and deeper subject-based understanding. At this stage, children begin to think in more complex ways. They move from concrete experiences to abstract ideas. They start engaging with concepts, theories, patterns, evidence and explanations. Their ability to reason improves. Their language becomes more structured. They begin to ask deeper questions

The Preparatory Stage is an important bridge in school education. It connects the play-based learning of the Foundational Stage with the structured learning of the Middle Stage. NEP 2020 and NCF-SE place strong emphasis on this stage. Children learn through stories, discussions, projects, field visits, concrete materials, art, games, and local experiences. PARAKH’s Holistic Progress Card gives practical form to competency-based assessment. It moves assessment beyond marks and written tests. It recognizes the child as a thinker, reader, speaker, creator, collaborator, problem-solver and sensitive member of society. The HPC documents growth through teacher observation, self-assessment, peer assessment, parent observation, projects, portfolios, classroom activities and other learning evidence Rashtriya Sarvekshan provides system-level evidence on competency development in Grades 3, 6, and 9. SQAAF helps schools review their quality across Administration, Curriculum, Assessment, Infrastructure and Inclusiveness. Together, these initiatives mark a major shift in assessment. They move education from assessment of learning to assessment for learning and assessment as learning. They encourage schools to recognize the whole child. They also make assessment more inclusive, reflective, and growth-oriented. Most importantly, they help every learner participate, progress and flourish.

Assessment at the Foundational Stage has undergone a significant conceptual shift in India. It is no longer viewed as a mechanism for testing recall or assigning marks. Instead, it is understood as a continuous process that supports learning, development and evidence-based decision-making. In alignment with NEP 2020, NCF-FS, PARAKH Taxonomy, and the Holistic Progress Card, foundational assessment emphasises competency-based and holistic development. It focuses on children’s growth across physical, socio-emotional, cognitive, linguistic, aesthetic, and learning habit domains. The PARAKH Taxonomy further strengthens this approach through the dimensions of Awareness, Sensitivity, and Creativity. The Holistic Progress Card documents children’s progress through observations, portfolios, classroom participation, artefacts, self-reflection, and parent inputs. Local resources, play-based learning, storytelling, art, movement, and community knowledge make assessment more contextual and inclusive. Large-scale assessments such as FLS and PARAKH Kaushal Sarvekshan complement classroom evidence by providing system-level insights. Together, these reforms reposition assessment as an evidence-based, child-centred, and improvement-oriented process.

PARAKH Integrated Test Management System (ITMS) is a comprehensive digital ecosystem for competency-based assessment. It supports the vision of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 by promoting competency-based, multidisciplinary and transparent assessment practices. The platform digitises the entire assessment cycle. It supports assessment design, blueprint development, question authoring, paper generation, secure printing, administration, and monitoring. It enables the creation of competency-based questions aligned with learning outcomes and the PARAKH Taxonomy domains of Awareness, Sensitivity, and Creativity. PARAKH ITMS provides multilingual support and role-based workflows. It also offers automated blueprinting and flexible paper assembly. These features improve efficiency, consistency, transparency, and quality across assessment processes. The platform supports important assessment reforms such as Two-Level Assessment and multidisciplinary assessments. By digitising assessment operations and strengthening evidence-based decision-making, PARAKH ITMS helps create reliable, inclusive and future-ready assessment systems that support the holistic development of learners.

Assessment plays a crucial role in improving learning outcomes. PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development), established by NCERT, is working to strengthen assessment practices through digitisation. Thus, reducing dependence on manual processes. It improves efficiency, transparency, accountability, and consistency across the assessment cycle. To support high-quality and competency-based assessments, PARAKH has developed a structured 7-Step Framework. The framework guides every stage of assessment development. Its seven stages include Assessment Design, Blueprint Development, Question Writing, Question Paper Assembly, Scoring Key Preparation, Question Review, and Moderation.

The School Quality Assessment and Assurance Framework (SQAAF) supports continuous quality improvement in schools. It evaluates school performance across five domains: Administration, Curriculum, Assessment, Infrastructure, and Inclusiveness. SQAAF does not function as a regulatory mechanism. Instead, it promotes self-evaluation and continuous improvement. It uses three developmental performance levels: Abhilasha, Pragati and Jagriti. These levels help schools understand their current status. They also help identify strengths and areas that need improvement. The framework is flexible and can be adopted according to a school's context and readiness. The framework encourages gradual and sustained progress. It promotes innovation, inclusiveness and evidence-based decision-making. Through this process, schools can strengthen their educational practices and improve student learning outcomes. SQAAF ultimately contributes to the development of an equitable, inclusive and future-ready education system.

The HPC moves beyond viewing learning as the accumulation of knowledge. It recognizes that identity is formed through continuous interaction between what learners experience, how they are perceived, and how they begin to perceive themselves. By capturing multiple dimensions of development, cognitive, socio-emotional, creative, physical, ethical, and cultural, it creates space for learners to be seen in their fullness. This expanded view allows children to recognize strengths that may otherwise remain invisible in a marks or grade-based system. 

The Holistic Progress Card (HPC), developed by PARAKH, reimagines assessment by moving beyond marks to capture a child’s holistic development across cognitive, socio-emotional, physical, and creative domains. Aligned with competency-based education and the National Education Policy 2020, it focuses on what learners can do with their knowledge rather than what they can recall. The HPC integrates assessment across awareness, sensitivity, and creativity, and adopts a multi-source approach involving teachers, peers, learners, and parents, including self and peer assessment. By emphasizing descriptive feedback over scores, it transforms assessment into a reflective, participatory process that supports meaningful learning and recognizes each learner’s unique growth.

Holistic Progress Cards invite Grade 6 students to reflect on their ambitions, raising an important question: is it too early? This blog argues that such reflection is both timely and necessary, especially in systems where learning is often driven by rote memorization and exam performance. Many students move through school without a clear sense of purpose, with conversations around education largely focused on grades.

Encouraging students to think about their aspirations helps connect learning to real life. Subjects begin to acquire meaning when students see how knowledge can be used to express ideas, understand community issues, or solve everyday problems. This process also nurtures agency, enabling learners to reflect on their strengths, identify areas for growth, and take greater ownership of their learning.

Importantly, it shifts conversations among teachers, students, and parents towards interests, skills, and purpose rather than just performance. While ambitions may change over time, the habit of reflection is what truly matters. In this way, Holistic Progress Cards support a gradual move towards more meaningful and purposeful learning.