This article uses the fate of the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE)—a process of classroom transaction mandated by the Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009 as a case to illustrate the point that altering policy alone is insufficient to effect change and inclusion. The existing paradigm, in this case, the culture of performativity in education, through its obeisance to marks, grades, and detention as indicators of learning and merit, feeds off and in turn sustains beliefs in the role of education in maintaining the social status quo.

The provisions of the RTE Act 2009 were built to work together as an organic unit to support the well acknowledged principle that knowledge cannot simply be transferred from teacher to pupil. Using this principle known as constructivism, which also underlies Argyris’s single-loop learning, each child constructs her own understanding and learning. The teacher acts as a facilitator by continuously observing and assessing what the child has understood, and on this basis proceeding to clarify or add information. This process of continuous comprehensive evaluation was mandated in the RTE to enhance both learning and inclusion. Academic authorities under the RTE Act were notified by the central and state governments for prescription of curriculum and evaluation procedures in conformity with the framework of the NCF 2005.

However, as this article shows, it was found that instead of the intended CCE based on the NCF 2005, another procedure, also incidentally named CCE, was being implemented. This CCE process with a system of assessment that was internal to the school had been developed (at short notice) for the secondary stage to replace the 10th class board examinations of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

The manner in which policy implementation can go astray has been demonstrated in this article as it attempts to describe and explain the appeal of this CCE, which came neither from the authorized academic authority nor was appropriate for the stage at which it came to be widely adopted. The article dwells on the policy actors, their motivations and interests, and this all too hasty application of CCE which predictably failed to enhance learning at the developmental stage at which it was applied. The ricocheting effects of this misapplication have led to the RTE Act being placed in Parliament to allow the state to bring back the pass–fail system, and the culture of performativity and exclusion at the elementary stage that the RTE Act had aimed at eradicating.

In conclusion, this article returns to implications of this case for any cultural change in public policy without first changing the social norms that sustain such policies of exclusion.