The Framework has been developed through a participatory and mutual consensus approach on 'How to evaluate diversified Indian schools for Incremental Improvement ’.The SSEF has the flexibility that makes it eminently suitable for adaptation, contextualization, and translation in state-specific languages.
The SSE framework comprises seven ‘Key Domains’ as the significant criteria for evaluating the performance of schools. This will enable the school to evaluate its performance against the well-defined criteria in a focused and strategic manner. As part of this endeavor, the School Standards and Evaluation Framework(SSEF) has been developed as an instrument for evaluating school performance.
The programme envisions reaching 1,6 million schools in the country through a compressive system of school evaluation. The major objectives of NPSSE are to develop a technically sound conceptual framework, methodology, instrument, and process of school evaluation to suit the diversity of Indian schools to develop a critical mass of human resource for adaptation and contextualization of the school evaluation framework and practices across states. It refers to evaluating the individual school and its performance in a holistic and continuous manner leading to school improvement in an incremental manner. NPSSE visualizes ‘School Evaluation’ as the means and ‘School Improvement’ as the goal.
In a major step towards comprehensive school evaluation as central to improving quality of school education in India, National Programme on School Standards and Evaluation has been initiated by National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), under the aegis of Union Ministry of Human Resource Development. The quality initiatives in school education sector, thus, necessitate focusing on school, its performance and improvement. The need for effective schools and improving school performance is increasingly felt in the Indian education system to provide quality education for all children.