Posted by Kesang Menezes who is a facilitator at Parenting Matters and mother of two girls aged 11 and 15.

Let me start by telling you that I am neither an educationist, nor someone who has conducted research on this topic. I am simply a parent sharing with you my personal experiences of observing my children grow up in a school environment without tests, exams or grades. 

In the beginning, I definitely resisted it. “What is the harm in giving the children an occasional test just to see what they know and do not know?” I argued with the principal of the school. But she was adamantly against it. She said, ‘As a teacher I do not need tests. Every day I am interacting with my students and I know where each of them stands and what help they need. “ 

Posted by Kesang Menezes who is a facilitator at Parenting Matters and mother of two girls aged 11 and 15.

We live in a society where the majority of women are forced into stereotypical roles and barely given choices about what they would like to do with their lives. But yet there is the emerging middle class which is empowering its girls to go ahead and achieve whatever they would wish for. These girls are doing well academically (and on average far better than boys) and surging into careers like engineering, management etc. I come from such a family as well, where I was brought up to believe that truly the sky is the limit for my ambitions. I spent my teen years only thinking about what career I wanted and dreaming about all that I would achieve. And then I got married and had a baby... all of my own choice.