CBSE’s Competency Revolution
As the education system prepares to transition toward competency-based assessment, we mark the symbolic end of an era dominated by Rote Learning—once a formidable force in Indian classrooms, now quietly fading as the Central Board of Secondary Education moves to make 50% of board exam questions application-oriented from 2026.
While we bid farewell with humour, the moment demands seriousness and responsibility. Replacing rote learning is not merely an emotional victory; it requires deep structural reform. Without deliberate planning, the shift may magnify existing divides—especially between urban and rural schooling ecosystems.
If policymakers wish to honour the passing of rote learning meaningfully, they must focus on building the foundations necessary for genuine learning to take its place. Here are key solutions and recommendations.
1. Strengthen Teacher Training as the Central Pillar
Competency-based education cannot succeed without well-equipped teachers.
Policy Recommendations
- Mandatory annual professional development focused on conceptual teaching, problem-based learning, questioning strategies, formative assessment, and multidisciplinary approaches.
- Specialised training modules for evaluating open-ended analytical responses to ensure fair marking.
- Incentives for skilled teachers to serve in rural and remote schools—scholarships, career progression, housing, and rural allowances.
No reform succeeds if teachers are expected to build new learning structures using old tools.
2. Bridge the Rural–Urban Resource Divide
To avoid turning progressive reform into new inequality, policymakers must ensure equal access to learning environments.
Key Actions
- Provide digital infrastructure, functional libraries, laboratories, project-based materials, and reliable connectivity in government schools.
- Develop regional resource hubs where underserved schools can access training, equipment, and collaborative teaching.
- Create learning content in local languages—videos, case studies, and problem-based examples relevant to rural life and local contexts.
A competency-based system cannot ask rural children to apply knowledge to real-world problems when their schools have never seen real-world learning tools.
3. Redesign Curriculum and Textbooks for Real Understanding
A new exam pattern requires curriculum transformation, not just restructuring question papers.
What Must Change
- Reduce curriculum density so students have time for analysis rather than rushing through overloaded syllabi.
- Include case studies, real data, interdisciplinary themes, field projects and reflective tasks.
- Develop sample frameworks illustrating what strong competency-based responses look like.
Students cannot learn to think if they do not have time to think.
4. Reform Assessment Beyond the Board Examination
True educational change must reflect continuous rather than episodic learning.
Recommendations
- Expand formative and project-based assessments that value creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.
- Provide clear rubrics for evaluating reasoning instead of relying on subjective judgement.
- Promote assessments that measure progress throughout the year, not one high-pressure test day.
The future demands thinkers, not memorisers.
5. Ensure Equity and Support for First-Generation Learners
Competency-based learning may initially feel like a disadvantage for students without academic support at home.
Solutions
- Create peer-support structures, mentoring programs, and remedial learning labs.
- Offer bridge courses to help students transition gradually toward analytical reasoning.
- Involve local communities, NGOs, and volunteer networks to build academic support outside school hours.
Educational reform must lift the vulnerable, not test their resilience.
6. Regulate and Align the Coaching Industry
Without structural checks, coaching centers may exploit the anxiety of reform and widen economic disparity.
Policy Needs
- Establish clear guidelines for coaching practices and marketing claims.
- Encourage coaching centres to collaborate with schools for capacity building rather than competing for enrolment.
- Promote low-cost community learning models and online free materials.
A system that replaces old pressure with new pressure does not qualify as progress.
7. Build a National Culture That Celebrates Curiosity
Reform is not just structural; it is cultural.
Action Points
- Launch public campaigns that redefine academic success beyond marks.
- Celebrate innovation, research, artistic expression and practical skills.
- Encourage parental awareness programs so home environments support learning rather than performance anxiety.
Learning must become joyful—not a war zone surviving on caffeine, tears, and memorised paragraphs.
The obituary of rote learning should not end with applause. It must trigger responsibility.
We have lost a system that trained students to repeat, not to think.
Let its passing be honoured by building a future where curiosity thrives, classrooms inspire, teachers are empowered, and every student—rural or urban—has the opportunity to understand, innovate, question and create.
If policymakers act with urgency and empathy, India can finally graduate from the century-old practice of memorisation to a true culture of intelligence.
Let this be our final tribute:
May we bury rote learning, not replace it with new forms of inequality.
May learning finally mean learning.
