The Cumulative Record as an Evaluation Record

From the day a student joins school, they start learning new things through teaching that follows the curriculum and the textbooks. But lessons are only part of the story. The same child grows taller and stronger, learns to think and understand more deeply, and changes in the way they get along with friends. Together these are the student's physical, mental and social development. One student races ahead in mathematics. Another falls behind after a long illness. A third is shaken by something that happened at home.

No teacher can carry all of this in memory for hundreds of students over many years. So the school keeps adding facts about each student, year after year, into one single record. That record is called the cumulative record.

Cumulative means built up little by little. Drop one coin into a piggy bank every day and in a few years it holds a real sum. A cumulative record grows the same way. What was written in class 1 is still there in class 10, and each year adds new entries on top. So turning the pages of one record shows the whole journey of a student's school life.

A cumulative record looks at the student from every side, not just one. It mainly holds the following kinds of details, and all of them are stored in order:

• Personal details: name, photo, date of birth, place of birth, address and date of admission to the school.
• Family details: the parents' education and occupation, how many people are in the family, and the student's place in the birth order.
• Educational details: the student's achievement in each subject, both in continuous assessment and in the periodic exams.
• Health details: height and weight in each class, and any illness the student has had.
• Conduct and behaviour details: qualities such as discipline, hard work, friendliness and a spirit of cooperation.

Besides these, the record also keeps the student's attendance, their interests, and a note of any special event that has happened in their life.

Why does a school need so many details? Because this data lets the teacher give the student correct counselling about their progress. When there is a record of how a student from a particular background is progressing, teaching and learning become easier. The record also shows clearly which areas the student needs to improve.

The cumulative record used in schools is a printed form with blanks and tables to fill in. Below, it is filled in for Asha, an imaginary class 8 student, so you can see what goes into each part. Suppose Asha has studied at this school since class 6.

1. Student's name and photo: the record opens with the student's name, with a photo pasted beside it. Here the name is Asha Thapa.

2. Student's personal details:

• Date of birth: 27 July 2012
• Place of birth: Pokhara
• Address: Ward 8, Pokhara Metropolitan City
• Date of admission to school: 18 April 2018

3. Student's health details: height and weight are measured and written down in each class, together with any illness.

4. Student's family details: the education and occupation of the father and mother are written in a table.

Below the table, more family details are filled in:

• Number of family members: 5
• Number of brothers: 1
• Number of sisters: 1
• Student's birth order: second child
• Education of the student's guardian: passed class 12

5. Student's educational details: for each class, two kinds of achievement are written subject by subject. First, from the continuous student assessment record, a tick shows whether the student is at the outstanding, very good or average level. Second, the grade point from the periodic achievement exam is written down. Asha's class 8 entry looks like this:

6. Student's conduct and behaviour details: here the student's qualities are rated at three levels. (उ) stands for good, (म) for average and (सु) for needs improvement. On the form these three columns repeat for every class, so you can see how behaviour changes from year to year. Asha's class 8 entry:

Last comes the attendance table, which records for each class the total days the school ran, the days the student was present and the days the student was absent:

• Student's interests: drawing, playing volleyball
• Details of any event: in class 8 she had typhoid and missed about three weeks of school.

Filling in a record is not enough. It has to be used. The details in a cumulative record give a great deal of information about a student, and each part tells the teacher something different:

• The family details help the teacher understand the student's situation and surroundings at home.
• The health details show the student's physical development. Across children of different age groups, the school learns about their physical growth as well as their learning.
• Using these records, the school can give students the counselling and guidance they need and help their personality develop.
• By comparing the student's conduct and habits now with how they were at admission, the teacher can see what has changed and offer the right support.
• The student's full personal details make it possible for teachers and the school to guide that student correctly.

Look at Asha's record again. In class 8 her weight has not gone up, her absences have risen to 17 days, typhoid is noted, and her mathematics grade point has dropped to 2.8. Seeing all of this in one place, the teacher understands that her weak mathematics comes from lessons missed while she was ill, not from laziness. So instead of scolding her, the teacher can reteach the missed lessons and advise her parents to look after her health. A marksheet on its own would never have shown the reason.

The cumulative record also travels with the student. When a student moves from their present school to another, or goes to a new school after being promoted to a higher class, the cumulative record is sent to that school along with the transfer certificate. Using it, the new school can give the student proper advice and guidance straight away, without having to get to know them from nothing.

Once an exam is over, the student's achievement is written into the record. But writing down marks or grades does not improve anyone's learning by itself. The achievement has to be examined subject by subject and talked through with the student.

Achievement analysis lets the teacher identify a student's strong and weak points. For example, if most class 9 students did well in science but lost marks on the questions about electricity, that lesson clearly needs to be taught again. After achievement has been evaluated and analysed, it must also be put to proper use. When the exam has been held and the answer sheets checked, the answer sheets must be kept safe so that feedback can be given to the students.

Analysing results benefits the school, the students, the teachers and the guardians alike. It also helps in revising and improving the curriculum and the textbooks. The table shows who gains and how:

Exam results test the questions as well as the students. When results are analysed, checking the quality of the questions is one of the main tasks. This means finding out each question's difficulty level and its discrimination.

Suppose a class has 40 students. All 40 answered the first question correctly. That question was too easy, and it could not separate the strong students from the weak. The second question was missed even by the best students in the class. It was too hard or unclearly worded. The third question was answered correctly by most of the strong students but by only a few of the weak ones. That question did its job of telling students apart well.

Once the difficulty level of each question is known, and whether it can separate strong students from weak ones, it becomes easy to improve the questions accordingly. In the next exam, questions that were far too easy or unclear can be removed or rewritten.

When student achievement is analysed and used in a suitable way, it brings the following benefits:

• (a) If the results are good, the reasons for it become clear, and if they are poor, so do the reasons for that.
• (b) Students are assessed accurately, which helps in giving them the right feedback. Once they know their mistakes, it is easier for them to improve.
• (c) The standard of the question paper can be judged from how the results are used.
• (d) Awkward, unclear and complicated questions can be improved. On the basis of the question paper and the results, the curriculum, the textbooks and the methods of evaluation can also be improved.
• (e) Through feedback, students can be helped to make academic progress and to evaluate themselves.
• (f) It can be checked whether the questions were made according to the specification grid, which matches questions to the objectives, and they can be corrected if they were not.
• (g) Teaching can be improved, which raises students' motivation to learn.
• (h) Guardians can help improve their children's studies.
• (i) Good answer sheets can be shown in class as model answer sheets.

Analysing and using student achievement makes it possible to correct mistakes made while setting questions. It helps in writing questions that fulfil the objectives of the curriculum. It helps bring the needed improvements to textbooks and the curriculum. And students' answer sheets can be shown to them directly in class as feedback. For all these reasons, achievement analysis must be used properly.

After an exam, a teacher can put achievement analysis to use in this order:

• Check the answer sheets and keep them safe.
• Examine the results subject by subject and question by question.
• Identify the students' strong and weak points, and each question's difficulty level and discrimination.
• Show the answer sheets in class as feedback, and share the good ones as models.
• Reteach the lessons where students were weak, and improve the questions for next time.
• Inform the guardians and ask them to support their children's studies.