Mahatma Gandhi University is planning to do away with home evaluation of answer sheets for its undergraduate and postgraduate examinations by next academic year.
The move comes in the wake of an assessment made by the authorities that the quality of evaluation of answer scripts at home did not match the standards achieved in centralised evaluation camps organised by the varsity. The number of answer scripts that came up for revaluation was higher for papers given under home valuation compared to those evaluated at the centralised camps.
R. Pragash, Syndicate member and convener of its sub-committee on examinations, told The Hindu that the varsity would scrap the home evaluation system by next academic year. “This is part of the ongoing efforts to scale up the standards of the conduct of examinations and publication of results. The answer scripts of postgraduate examinations will also come under the ambit of centralised evaluation camps from next year,” he said.
The varsity authorities found that additional examiners would take extra care to improve the quality of evaluation under the presence of a chief examiner in evaluation camps. Moreover, the chief examiner would get a chance to correct mistakes, if any, in the answer scripts evaluated by the additional examiners without delay.
The examination wing of the varsity had no other option, but to include even newly-appointed contract teachers in its self-financing colleges as additional examiners for home evaluation to meet the increase in demand for personnel for answer paper evaluation.
The chief examiners need to only pick scripts on a random basis from a prescribed number of answer script sets under the home evaluation system. This had often led to the erosion of quality of evaluation.
The varsity has decided to adopt the centralised evaluation model implemented during the evaluation of degree final semester examinations, the results of which were released in record time in May, from now onwards. The answer scripts from the nearly 192 affiliated colleges were brought to the main campus of the varsity at Kottayam for packing. Each packet, which consisted of 100 answer scripts, was sent to the evaluation camps functioning in select affiliated colleges in various zones. An additional examiner used to get five days to value 100 answer scripts at the rate of 20 per day at the centralised camp.
The centralised camp for the evaluation of answer sheets of the second, third and fifth semester undergraduate examinations will be held in November. Classes for undergraduate courses will be suspended for 10 days to ensure the availability of teachers at these evaluation camps.
