Thanks to repeatedly postponed examinations, truant teachers and administrative roadblocks, the results of the first and third semester examinations of the credit and semester degree courses of Kerala University —that got over in December and November 2011, respectively — are yet to be published.
Though the regulations for the choice-based credit and semester (CBCS) system mandate that the results be published within 40 days from the completion of the examination, the results of these two semesters are likely to be published only by the end of March, 2012.
Even though the third semester examinations got over in early November, the university decided not to commence evaluation right away and to wait for the S1 examinations to be over. “We did not want to disrupt classes and so we decided to evaluate both sets of answer sheets together,” Pro-Vice Chancellor J. Prabhash told The Hindu .
Moreover, the University decided not to give a holiday to colleges during the centralised valuation camps for these examinations. As a result, the evaluation of answer sheets began only in the third week of January 2012. Here, the university faced a problem it has always grappled with — an acute shortage of teachers at the camps.
In short, the evaluation of the answer sheets of the English examinations is likely to be over only by the second week of February. Only then will the answer sheets of other subjects be evaluated. “By the time this evaluation is over, it will almost be time for the next semester examinations,” a University functionary associated with the evaluation process pointed out.
So far no action has been initiated against teachers who did not turn up at the camps or against principals who chose not to depute them there.
Too many exams
It is also now evident that the University of Kerala is not quite up to managing these many examinations in a year. The number of examinations it has to manage in a year has doubled since the introduction of the choice-based credit and semester system.
Some suggestions
So what can the University do now? Some suggest that the varsity switch to a ‘home evaluation' system for the CBCS examinations. Then no camps need to be organised, and no college needs to be closed. Some recommend that the varsity conduct only alternate-semester examinations, leaving the rest to the colleges. This would halve its examination burden.
However, in a home evaluation environment the varsity would have no control over the pace of evaluation. Also, some teachers could end up evaluating a bulk of the answer sheets. The varsity would any way be unable to force teachers to take up evaluation work.
