Capture every competency observation — without 12 notebooks. Teacher, peer, parent, self — one record per child.

How most schools record competency observations today

It is a Wednesday in October at a CBSE school in Indore. The Class 5 teacher Mrs Verma has just finished a group activity where she asked the children to plan a class picnic together. She watched closely. Aanya led the planning, listened to others and drew a clear bus route on the board. Rohan kept interrupting but came up with the most creative idea. Three other children sat quietly through the whole exercise. Mrs Verma jots a few notes in the back of her diary, knowing she will struggle to recall any of it three months later when the half-yearly NEP Holistic Progress Card is due.

Across the school, eight other teachers have done similar observations across the same week. The art teacher noted who collaborated well in the mural project. The PE teacher noted who showed leadership in the relay. The music teacher noted who took initiative during the assembly rehearsal. None of these observations land in the same place. By December the diaries are mixed up, half are missing, and the school's NEP HPC submission to CBSE looks like a fiction written from memory. The principal apologises to the affiliation officer when the discrepancy is flagged.

NEP requires schools to capture competency observations as evidence, not as memory. CBSE/SQAA, IB Approaches to Learning, and every modern board are moving the same way. Inkwelly Competency Observations replaces the diary-and-WhatsApp pattern with one structured record per observation: who observed, who was observed, which competency, what proficiency level, when, with what evidence. Audit-ready, parent-visible, board-aligned.

How Inkwelly Competency Observations work

A competency observation is a single record that captures: which student, which competency, who observed, what proficiency level was demonstrated, on what date, with what optional notes and evidence. Every record carries this same structure regardless of who creates it.

Four observer perspectives are first-class:

• Teacher — the most common observer. The class teacher, subject teacher or co-curricular teacher records what they directly observed in class, on the playground, in the lab, or in a project.
• Self — the student themselves rates their own competency on age-appropriate items. Used for metacognitive skills (self-management, self-discipline, self-awareness).
• Peer — a classmate observes. Used carefully (with anonymity controls) for collaboration, communication and teamwork.
• Parent — a parent observes the child at home. Used for habits, responsibility, family involvement — things teachers cannot see directly.

Every observation captures a proficiency snapshot on the standard three-level scale: BEGINNER, PROGRESSIVE, PROFICIENT. The proficiency level can be linked to a specific NEP learning outcome (e.g. 'Demonstrates active listening in group discussions'). Evidence is optional but encouraged — a photo of the project, a video clip from the assembly, a worksheet scan, an audio file from the recital. Inkwelly stores the evidence in the school's media library and binds it to the observation forever.

When term-end comes, the marksheet pulls the latest proficiency snapshot per competency directly from this record set. The same record also feeds the NEP Holistic Progress Card, the parent portal view, and the principal's class-wide competency dashboard. One source, four artefacts.

See it in action

Where this actually pays off in your school year

Competency observations are not a separate workflow — they are a thread running through every term. Inkwelly's record set lights up in five recurring moments.

Portfolio assessment for the half-yearly. The class teacher reviews every child's observation set at the half-yearly mark. The Inkwelly observations dashboard shows, per child, every observation logged this term, by which observer, on which competency, with which proficiency level, and the evidence count. The teacher writes the term remark in 30 minutes instead of three days because the observations are already structured.

NEP Holistic Progress Card submission. When the school submits HPC data to CBSE/SQAA, the system pulls the latest proficiency per competency per student directly from the observation record set. There is no manual data entry into a CBSE template — the school exports the data in the schema CBSE expects. The data is verifiable from evidence in the same export.

Parent–teacher meeting. The parent walks in expecting an opinion. The teacher pulls up the child's observation timeline on a tablet, shows the parent the proficiency progression across the term, and plays a video evidence clip from the assembly speech. The conversation moves from defensive ('really, my child cannot speak in front of the class?') to constructive ('how do I support this at home?').

Learning-outcome reporting at term-end. The marksheet pulls a competency snapshot from the latest observations. The HPC pulls a learning-outcome view of the same data. Both ship from one record set.

Year-end review. At the end of the academic year, the school reviews the entire observation set per student to write the year-end report and to inform the next class teacher's onboarding. Continuity across years is built in — the new class teacher can see what the previous class teacher observed, with evidence, and start the year informed.

See competency observations live on Inkwelly

Send us your school's NEP HPC template or CBSE/SQAA submission format. We will run a sample observation cycle for one class on Inkwelly, free, and walk you through the export.

Limits, safety, and the small print every school should ask about

Observation data is sensitive — it captures children's behaviour, abilities and growth. The protections below exist because audit reviewers, parents, and CBSE all have legitimate questions about how this data is handled.

Soft-delete preserves history, not just the field. When an observation is deleted, it is marked inactive but the record (and its evidence) remains in the database for audit purposes. Reports filter on isActive=true so deleted observations stop influencing aggregates. The principal can review the deleted set if a question arises during a board review.

Peer observations default to anonymity for parents. When a parent views their child's observations, peer observations show 'a classmate observed' instead of the peer's name. Schools that explicitly want named peer observations can override this, but the default protects the peer's privacy.

Evidence files are scoped to the school. A photo uploaded as evidence for one school's observations cannot be referenced by another school. Storage paths are scoped per organisation per school per session, so even an unauthorised access attempt cannot list across schools.

No retroactive proficiency edits without a paper trail. Every change to an observation — proficiency, notes, evidence — is timestamped and attributed. There is no way to silently raise a child's proficiency after the term-end report is published.

Observations are scoped to organisation, school and session. A change in academic session does not pollute the previous year's record set. Year-on-year comparison is possible because the records remain, but they cannot be silently merged across years — the academic session ID is part of every record.