10% of college papers should be devoted to critical thinking: NAAC panel

An expert panel under the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has proposed that college-level examinations should be re-designed to accommodate at least 10% marks on evaluation of “higher-order cognition” among students. This would encourage critical thinking for them.

The proposal was published on Wednesday, on revising the assessment and accreditation process of higher educational institutions in the country. It has been co-authored by the Bhushan Patwardhan, Chairman of NAAC executive committee and KP Mohanan, the former Professor of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.

The suggestion has been reviewed and endorsed by the NAAC Academic Advisory Committee and the Executive Committee. Both the bodies have discussed to scale up the weightage in phases to 20 per cent and 40 per cent in the future.