The Hindu : Retired teachers for PG valuation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 25, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

Retired teachers for PG valuation

By G. Mahadevan

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM July 24. The University of Kerala is learnt to be considering setting up a panel of retired and serving teachers to carry out valuation of the papers of the PG examinations conducted by the Institute of Distance Education (IDE).

This, university sources said, was aimed at reducing the current valuation workload of serving teachers — something about which the teachers had been complaining to the university for a long time.

The university was also learnt to be considering placing a three-year `out-of-service' limit for the retired professors it would be empanelling for valuation duty. While serving teachers would be posted in supervisory positions, to effect accountability to the university, the valuation work would more or less be shared equally between the serving and the retire teachers.

It was understood that the university planned to extend this scheme to the degree courses as well.

According to the sources, the decision to utilise the services of retired teachers was taken following a perceived fall in standards of valuation by serving teachers consequent to ever-increasing numbers of answer papers that were being valued by one teacher.

It had been pointed out by the teachers that the number of answer sheets of private candidates was many times the number of students for that course in all the colleges put together.

Teachers also pointed out that in the centralised valuation camps, a teacher was not allowed to value more than 20 to 25 papers during the 9-30 a.m. to 4-30 p.m. time period. While the number of answer papers a teacher had to value during `home valuation' was much higher.

This was more true in the case of teachers of languages who had to value papers of the `main' examinations and those of the subsidiary examinations.

With PG courses now having the semester system, a fortnight's absence of a teacher caused disruption in the academic schedule. The introduction of the semester system for graduate courses too was round the corner.

Though university officials refused to the reveal exact figures, the sources in the university said that the number of students who were applying for revaluation and were getting much higher marks had registered a sharp increase over the years.

Many teachers, however, want the university to go one step further and dissociate them completely from evaluating answer papers of students not studying in the colleges.

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