Transparency in Cadet College Admission Test

Transparency in Cadet College Admission Test
Now is the season of collecting and submitting cadet college admission forms leaving and making the guardians curious enough to learn the ins and outs of admission procedure. This write-up may satisfy some of their principal queries. Every year fresher are taken in class seven in all the twelve cadet colleges which have the capacity to accommodate six hundred cadets. Applications are invited through advertisement in the national Bengali and English dailies. Every year application forms are distributed usually in November and December and admission test is held in the month of January. Admission seekers of 2010 will have to sit for the admission test on 22 January, 2010. Examination will be held in English for 80 marks, Mathematics 60, Bengali 40 and General knowledge 20. It means they will have to sit for tests for 200 marks. It is obvious that more emphasis has been put on English keeping pace with the changing situation of the globe. It is also because the medium of instruction in cadet colleges is English. Candidates are selected through written, viva voce and medical tests. Each candidate will have to undergo this series of testing procedure to prove him/her worthy of being a cadet. Finally selected candidates need to submit relevant papers and documents as required by the college.
Several changes have been brought to collect admission forms, subliming them, appearing in the test, distribution of marks, choosing test venue and colleges which were long overdue. During my stay at Cadet College I tried to bring these things into the notice of the higher authorities through direct proposal, written proposal and producing articles in dailies. Though immediate response was very thin or poor, now changes have been made in the required places. The authorities deserve thanks for it. Admission test questions are prepared following the syllabus and curriculum of class six or its equivalent. The questions for the admission test will be set both in Bangla and English. Candidates can answer either in Bangla or in English. But they have to indicate their choice at the time of submitting the application form. The applicant must be a Bangladeshi national. He/she must be between 12 and 14years of age on 1st January of the year he/she is going to apply and have passed class six. A candidate can sit for the cadet college admission test once. If anyone appearing for the second time, he/she will be withdrawn with full compensation when detected and legal actions may be taken if occasion demands.
Cadet College authorities are judicious enough to lessen the burden of intended guardians. They are conscious enough to really test the originality of the candidates. This is why they have brought changes in the required places. The prospectus and syllabus of intake and the admit cards are given instantly when the candidates /guardians take the form to avoid the unnecessary harassment and tension to get the admit card either through postal order or courier service. Cadet coaching centers enjoy a thriving business at the cost of poor or middle class guardians’ worrying about their children’s admission. Again, they cram the young brains of the candidates with much unnecessary information. To avoid this bizarre thing, the full syllabuses are given to the candidates to have a guideline on which areas they will be tested. All the questions will be from NCTB textbooks. No bizarre or abnormal things will be in the test. So, the candidates and guardians should be conscious enough not to depend on coaching centres. If they remain sincere and regular in their classes and a little bit more care is taken at home, it’s enough to sit for cadet college admission test and qualify. Admission question will seek mainly the creativity of the students; no memorization will be tested which the coaching centers emphasize. If they enter into the college by means of so-called magic power of the coaching centers, it becomes detected through various internal screening processes. So, young candidates should try to exercise the basic things, not abnormal or bizarre things as the coaching centers suggest.
Candidates can collect form from any places mentioned in the advertisement and sit for the examination from any places he/she mentions in the form. Again, a quite new thing has been introduced which I must mention here in the greater interest of all stakeholders. It was a common practice that a candidate had to choose one college. If he/she failed to prove his/her worth for that college, his/her dream to read in a cadet college was shattered completely. Now each candidate has two choices besides a third option in case he/she fails to qualify for his/her two chosen colleges. Third option gives him/her the scope to read any cadet college if the authority finds it possible. This is quite a good thing. Again, there is a waiting list and the vacant seats are filled up from the list. This practice was unknown in the previous time. I witnessed that one year about fifty percent cadets were out from Comilla Cadet college because of identifying their seating for the test for the second time and those seats remained vacant throughout the whole six years. It was a great wastage for our poor country. Now the system proves quite reasonable.
As test items will be selected and set from English for today grade six, candidates need no worry unnecessarily. All the traditional grammars such as sentence, subject and predicate, parts of speech, gender, number, tenses, verbal, (infinitives, participle, gerund)Auxiliaries and Modals), synonyms, homophone, transformation of sentences, question tag, phrases and phrases and idioms, re-arrange the jumbled words to make sentences, correct form of verbs, spelling, translation will be set in the admission test. Paragraph, story writing from given outlines, comprehension will be given to see their capacity of creative writing Bengali all prose and poems of NCTB book. Bengal grammar will also be as of class six standard and they items mentioned in the syllabus. General knowledge will be mainly from NCTB approved social science, general science, history, geography, literature, science and technology. Only current sporting events will be as question items. A group of highly qualified and expertise team prepares admission test questions marinating all possible sorts of secrecy.
To prevent the least possibility of manipulation in one of the important tiers of admission procedure i.e. viva-voce , the board chairmen( the principal of a cadet college, members – senior English teacher, adjutant and medial officer) is kept in the dark about which board he is going to chair. He does not know even one hour before the viva-voce begins in which board he will be the head. If anybody wants to influence the board chairman, it becomes awfully difficult because in that case one is to convince all the 12 chairmen. Virtually it is not possible. Thus utmost transparency is maintained in the whole admission process.
Md. Masum Billah
Senior Manager: BRAC Education Programme, PACE
Cell: 01714-091431
Email: mmbillah2000@yahoo.com

Assessment is a learning for teachers also

Assessment is an integral part of any kind of learning. It determines the progress of the learners. It also determines the degree of the progress made by a teacher in respect of making his/her pupils understand the topic or subject he/she teaches. Assessment guides or tells him whether he should change the course of his action, way of delivering things and art of teaching. So, assessment is a very important part of the whole teaching and leaning process. Most teachers only think that the main aim of assessment system is to measure student’s performance. It measures a teacher’s performance as well. The more a teacher is expert in assessing his students, the more he enters the depth of his profession. Until and unless a teacher knows well how to assess his students, he cannot be a good teacher as teaching and assessing go hand in hand. A teacher should also know what kind of assessments he/she should do. Which one stirs the students and gives them benefit. Usually two kinds of assessments are practiced in our educational institutions such as summative and formative assessment. Formative assessment is very important and it can be done with almost reality but the summative may not always give the exact figure. However, this assessment is done mostly in our public and international examination. It takes less time but formative assessment takes time. It is not always easy to conduct such kind of assessment.
Assessment has a major impact on teaching and learning. The assessment of student learning has often been seen a tiresome and harmful necessity. Tiresome is in the sense that a teacher is to examine a lot of scripts employing his/her physical and mental labour. Students are to remain busy mentally, physically and even psychologically. It is said harmful because it seemed to encourage cramming and superficiality. In most cases students prefer selective learning which somebody considers it a commercial learning. It is very practical that learners want to have commercial benefit from their learning and reading. Whatever tiresome or troublesome it is, assessment is a must as without it learners will hardly feel encouraged to read and learn. Teachers will have no exiting game or work with the student if there is no assessment system. Students’ future, career, life, development, encouragement are determined by the assessment. Whatever, pain they have to bear special kind of taste and pleasure they derive from the examination. As assessment reinforces learning, so, it must be an integral and planned part of the whole learning process. A program may have excellent curriculum and materials, but if its assessment component is not well designed and integrally aligned with both of these, the entire program may ultimately fail to achieve its objectives. In this case I like to cite the example of our communicative English syllabus. Our communicative curriculum is excellent but the examination system still does not fully or appropriately reflect CLT.
The terms ‘assessment’ and ‘testing’ are often used synonymously. However, there is subtle difference between these two elements. Assessment refers to the broad area of monitoring or taking stock of the performances of students or the impact of programs. It involves a variety of procedures both quantitative and qualitative. Measurement is a system for observing a phenomenon, attribute or characteristic and translating those observations into numbers according to a rule. (Christine Coombe)
Testing refers to a set of specified, uniform tasks to be performed by students. These tasks are appropriate samples from the knowledge or skills in a broader field of content. Evaluation is the determination of the worth or value of an event, object or individual in terms of specified criteria.
Formative assessment which is conducted during a course is more likely to have a positive wash back effect than summative assessment which is typically administered at the end of a course. This is because students can be given detailed and comprehensive diagnostic feedback after a formative assessment. Student are less likely to pay attention to diagnostic feedback on a summative assessment as they have essentially finished the course and are more likely to be interested in finding out their overall course grade. In order to facilitate learning from an assessment teacher need to provide their students with detailed, comprehensive feedback on their performance in the assessment. Teacher needs to allocate sufficient time for providing feedback and provide student with rationale for giving feedback. If the process and procedure of assessment are not transparent, learning hardly takes place there. Students should be informed of what the assessment will cover, how it is to be rated and graded.

Md. Masum Billah
Senior Manager: BRAC Educaiton Programme, PACE
Phone: 9355253(res), 01714-091431 (cell)
Email: mmbillah2000@yahoo.com

Making classroom an attractive centre for learning

Making classroom an attractive centre for learning

It may not be unknown to most teachers that a safe, clean, comfortable and attractive classroom can stimulate learning and help build classroom community. But for many teachers seem not to be bothered about it. Remaining absence from the class and drop out from the schools are very common phenomenon in rural schools and even in some urban schools. In rural schools it happens due to some social and financial factors where teachers may not have any direct control or influence. In urban areas also it happens because of not having any attraction or excitement in the class. But a teacher can make the most of his/her classroom environment by carefully considering his/her needs and the needs of his/her students. The physical environment of the classroom is a key element in effective classroom management. Though a subject teacher does not have full control over the overall school administration, an individual teacher can contribute a lot to bring some novelties and attractions in his/her class. Really some wonderful ideas are imperative to improve physical arrangement of a class. In order to be the star attraction in the classroom a teacher will need to create a ‘center stage’. Certainly a classroom comes to life with word walls, bulletin boards, and posters but for many students visual stimulants like these are very distracting. A teacher should take time to think about where he/she will be when delivering most of his/her instruction. It is best to create a bland area there so a teacher becomes the brightest star in his/her classroom universe. When these individual efforts to make a classroom attractive can collectively exercise an impression on overall administration of the school and bring a real positive change.

Colourful pictures, posters, drawings and writings of the students can be hung on the walls of the classroom. It will help them own the classroom and an unknown kind of urge to come to the class to their individual works. These creative works will remain in the classroom till a certain time. And then they will be replaced by newer kind of creative materials as the old ones will not hold their attraction for long. Newer posters and drawings mean newer excitement and environment. One class can take minimum two shows a year and if possible three or four. Unfortunately in our classes most of the cases there is nothing except one blackboard. It will never attract the students to come to the class whatever bright students they are. Teachers have full control over the class and such kind of arrangements. He is the monarch in this field. So, he can bring tasteful changes in his class to bring novelty and love for the class.

School compound remains bare or unused. The whole school campus can be turned into a heavenly place by making beautiful flower gardens, vegetable gardens and fruit gardens. The newly established schools in the cities and towns do not have such kind of facilities as schools are housed on one or two floors. But in rural areas still schools are located in the open space offering a serine and suitable environment for teaching and learning. But these beautiful places are not looked after to retain and increase its beauty.

A teacher can help kids stay focused by carefully arranging classroom furniture,. Items don’t have to live where they were dropped off by the custodians. The physical elements in a teacher’s classroom can have a great impact on learning. He can’t change the location of window, doors or boards but keeping window an doors to students, back or at least along the sides can be effective ways to reduce distractions. Teacher’s desk and such operations center should be away from teacher’s center stage in a somewhat less visible location. When the teacher confers with a student or group at his desk while other students are doing seat work or group work, a less visible desk area will minimize distractions. So carefully consider your furniture arrangement and the function of various areas in your classroom.

Seating arrangement in the classroom should be made purposefully. A teacher should not or cannot simply ‘stand and deliver’. Research in best teaching practices shows that for many of today kids don’t respond to the teachers who don’t move in the class. And moving among the students while we are teaching is one of the most effective ways to manage a class. Of course some teachers just lecture and think these are a great job. But no matter how spellbinding we might be, their hidden dynamic that directly relates to the ways students are seated. In the traditional classroom seating arrangement of row of desks, those students in the front row or two are much more involved with your lesson due to your proximity. The middle rows are somewhat involved but to a lesser extent. Those back rows, no matter how much you try to involve them are too far away to have the same feeling of involvement as the front rows.

Change this dynamic by rearranging your seating to include some aisles you can walk through. As you teach waling among the desks, you will give all students the feeing of those front row students as you repose yourself here and there in the classroom. When you begin using this new arrangement, explain to the students what you are doing and why. Tell them you are trying a new arrangement to help you be the most effective teacher possible and you hope it will help them learn as much as possible in your class.

A learning centre is a space set aside in the classroom that allows easy access to a variety of learning materials in an interesting and productive manner. Learning contents are usually designed to offer a variety of materials designs through which students can work by themselves or with others to operation the information learned in the classroom. Centers are designed to enhance the learning of concepts, skills, themes or topics. This learning can take place after a topic is presented to students during the course of presenting important concept or as an initial introduction to material in the text.

Learning centres can have any number of designs each limited only by your creativity and imagination. Feel free to work with your students in creating a center they will want to use. Such shared responsibility assures that students have a sense of ownership in the center and will be more willing to engage in the resultant activities. Education specialists say that there three different types of learning centers: enrichment centre, skill centers and interest and exploratory centers.

Enrichment centers are designed to offer students a variety of learning alternatives as an adjunct to a common unit of instruction. These centers are typically used after the presentation of important materials or concepts and are designed to provide students with opportunities to enrich and enhance their appreciation and understanding of the topics through individual experiences in the center. For example, after you have presented a lesson on the life cycle of plants, you might assign individual students to a center with the following components.

Enrichment centers require you to be aware of your students’ learning styles as well as their knowledge about a topic. The enrichment center can provide individual students with varied activities or combination of activities that differ from those pursued by other students. As such the center becomes an individualized approach to the promotion of the topic.

Skill centers are similar to enrichment centers in that they are used after the initial teaching of a concept or skill. Their differences lie in the fact that students are assigned particular areas in the center as opposed to having free choice of the topics they want to pursue. Thus after introductory instruction on a particular concept has taken place; you can assign students to various parts of the center to help reinforce the information presented. You must be aware of the various skill needs of your students to effectively assign individuals to the areas in the center through which they can strengthen and enhance these skills.

Interest and exploratory centers differ from enrichment and skill development centers in that they are designed to capitalize on the interests of students. They may not necessarily match the content of the textbook or the curriculum. Instead they provide students with hands on experiences they can pursue at their own pace and level of curiosity. These types of centers can be set up through the classroom with students engaging in their own selection of activities during free time upon arrival in the morning as a free choice activity during the day or just prior to dismissal.

These centers allow students to engage in meaningful centers. A paper and pencil inventory can provide you with important information about their interests. Many teachers apply different strategies in the classroom and some of them are highly effective. Sometimes a few simple changes can make surprising improvements in the way students remain focused and help reduce interruptions caused by minor distractions. As teacher we should remember effective teaching begins with a well planned physical set-up of the learning.

Md. Masum Billah

Senior Manager: BRAC Education Programme, PACE

Cell: 01714-091431

9355253 (res)

Email: mmbillah@dhaka.net, mmbillah2000@yahoo.com.