Errors depress students

Tirupati: The lapses in the evaluation of answer scripts of students in Intermediate public examinations raised serious doubts over the fate of Intermediate education in the state. To meet the deadline of completing the valuation, the regional inspection officers (RIOs) are pressurising the assistant examiners to evaluate more number of answer scripts per day.

As per norms, any examiner has to evaluate only 30 papers per day, that too in two shifts of 15 papers each in one shift. But, they are being forced to evaluate at least 45 papers a day, thus affecting the quality of evaluation. The lecturers on examiner duty argue that due to heavy workload, they were experiencing severe stress and many mistakes were taking place in evaluation or totalling or at the stage of entering the marks.

This is not new for examiners nor Inter board officials. But, in the examinations held in March 2017, a candidate of Guntur district got 19 marks in Sanskrit. As he was a brilliant student, he was severely upset and applied for revaluation. This time, he got 97 marks. It was found that along with wrong evaluation, mistakes took place in summing up the total marks.

Since there was a huge difference of marks, the Board of Intermediate Education officers went deep into the problem. They came to know that it was evaluated in Tirupati through jumbling system. They found several other errors also and issued memos to the lecturers concerned and imposed fines. Sources said most of the errors were found in Sanskrit and English language papers.

“The mental agony of a student, his parents and the college management can be imagined when the student gets 19 marks instead of 91 and 28 instead of 82, etc.,” said a lecturer in Government Junior College here. He said the examiners were overburdened and facing severe stress during the evaluation.

Secondly, while there were 447 government junior colleges and 156 aided junior colleges, there were more than 2,000 private colleges. Hence, most of the government junior college staff were appointed as Chief Examiners, Subject Experts, etc., It was the private college teachers who were involved in original evaluation process, he said.

The private colleges were not sending the lecturers who actually teaches the lessons in the classrooms, because they were engaged in Eamcet, IIT, NEET coaching during the time of evaluation. Instead, they send the staff meant for supervising the study hours and others. They don’t have any experience in actual teaching. This leads to either over valuation or under valuation of answer scripts but correct valuation will not be there, the lecturer observed.

The General Secretary of AP Government Junior College Lecturers Association V Ravi told The Hans India that reforms are necessary at least now. “During the month-long valuation work, the staff are not allowed any holiday. They have been demanding a break on Sunday but no one cares. There was a severe pressure owing to tight schedule,” he said and demanded that the government not announce the date of results immediately after the examinations are over.

“Also, it should take effective steps to ensure only those involved in classroom teaching attend the valuation work. No teacher should be given more than 30 papers per day for valuation. If the results have to be announced early, the board should increase the number of examiners,” Ravi said.

By V Pradeep Kumar