Calcutta Telegraph;Daulat Rahman;Saturday, Aug 13, 2011.
Guwahati, Aug. 12: The Board of Secondary Education, Assam (Seba) has decided to immediately initiate measures to ensure that evaluation of next year’s Matric examination was 100 per cent error free.
The board’s initiative comes close on the heels of a Supreme Court verdict passed last Tuesday, which ruled that examinees had the right to inspect evaluated answer sheets under the RTI Act.
The apex court had rejected the contention of various parties, including the Assam Public Service Commission, that disclosure of answer sheets and allowing their inspection would lead to collapse of the entire system.
Seba secretary L.N. Sarma told The Telegraph that the board would start comprehensive training of teachers across the state to ensure that not even a single mistake was committed in evaluation and students were not deprived of the marks they deserved.
The first round of training will be held in Dibrugarh on August 18, followed by similar rounds in different districts in a phased manner.
Sarma said given the Supreme Court verdict, the board would have to produce answer sheets before the examinees if they complained of discrepancies in allotment of marks.
Though the board had decided to implement the initiative as part of its examination reforms even before the Supreme Court had made the ruling, Sarma said the verdict had forced Seba to become extra cautious in ensuring that students did get a chance to put the board down.
“During the training process, teachers will be told about various aspects of the evaluation process used by the board. There will be detailed discussions on modern evaluation system along with motivation training for the teachers. Once we are able to create a pool of teachers who are trained, motivated and well-versed in Seba’s evaluation mechanism, it will be possible to bring down the chances of evaluation errors to a minimal,” he said.
During the training, the board will offer various innovative evaluation tips and ways to enable students secure deserving marks.
Such a comprehensive evaluation training programme for teachers had not been held in recent years.
Seba has been facing strong criticism from different quarters for its alleged faulty evaluation system. There were several cases in the past when aggrieved students had dragged the board to court on charges of allotting poor marks.
On other hand, the board has already started training teachers on ways to set error-free Matric question papers.
Sarma said in the recent years, a group of teachers used to set question papers in a “casual” manner, by either making the papers very tricky or easy. “It was observed that the question papers had many errors, which jeopardised the careers of several brilliant and serious students. Many questions were set out of the context and syllabus. The question paper of general mathematics in the last Matric examination was an example of such an approach, which deprived many students of the chance to score good marks,” he said.
The board has already trained teachers on ways to set questions papers of general science, general mathematics and social science. The training covering English question papers will be held on August 16.
Sarma said the ultimate objective of the different initiatives was to help the board evolve a student-oriented examination system.
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