Mixed response to doing away with re-evaluation

Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) in its latest announcement has mentioned that it has been decided to discontinue the provision of re-evaluation of Class XII answer sheets from 2017.

The re-evaluation process was done for 10 subjects of Class XII examination. The number of requests for re-evaluation in the previous year was only around 1.8 per cent and the students benefited by this were even lesser.

Going by these statistics the senior officials of the governing body have thought of doing away with the re-evaluation process.

Reacting to the announcement not only CBSE students, but also parents and teachers expressed mixed feelings. While some believe that it is a good move by the Board, others feel that CBSE is leaving the students on tenterhooks.

Sita Kiran, Regional Director of DAV School and CBSE state convener, says, “It is a good move as CBSE never completely re-evaluates the answer sheets.

It just recounts them and Board spends a lot more amount than what it collects from the students in this process.

By making this move CBSE will make sure that the nuts and bolts of the correction process is taken care. And it is good news for students.”

“In my 32-year-old career I have never seen anybody benefitted by the re-evaluation process. Removal of this provision will definitely not affect students in a negative way.

Good news here is that as CBSE has taken this decision it will make sure that teachers who are correcting the answer sheets will be very careful in correcting it and I personally appreciate the decision,” says Laxmi Rao, Principal of Jain International School.

While parents and students are worried that if such a regulation comes into practice then how the system makes sure to address to the students queries and doubts regarding the exam because there have been cases where the students were benefited from re-evaluation.

Bhavani Krishna, parent of a Class XII girl from Hyderabad says, “We cannot negate the fact that such implementation will keep the students at the losing end as there were times when students were not really happy with the checking, several times even the teachers forget to check a particular question or marks are not given for some question.”

“So how do we plan to deal with such circumstances? As we have seen that re-evaluation does provide the student with certain benefits,” she adds.

“CBSE final question papers have been very tough for the past three years. For instance, 2016 Maths paper was very tough even for the very intelligent students.

By removing this provision most of the students lose the only hope to check their answer papers again which might lead to decrease in the pass percentage,” says S Sudha, parent of a Class XII boy from Hyderabad.

"I believe the move of eliminating re-evaluation will definitely affect students. Re-evaluation helps in minimising the chances of inaccuracy in allotment of marks and analysing the mistakes students make while taking a test.

Re-evaluation provides students with a transparent platform where they get the freedom to learn from their mistakes. So, I believe such a practice should still be in the system for the benefit of students, “says Beas Dev Ralhan, CEO & Co-founder, Next Education India Pvt. Ltd.