Universities are scrambling to get evaluators to grade English answer scripts. This is proving to be rather challenging. The evaluation of odd semester examinations is currently under way in many universities across the State.
Lingaraja Gandhi, Registrar (Evaluation) of Bengaluru Central University, said as of last week, while evaluation of a majority of the subjects had been completed, only a little over 30% of English answer scripts had been graded. “Around 10,000 of the 32,426 English answer scripts have been corrected by the lecturers,” he said.
For the most part, universities are dependent on lecturers from unaided colleges to evaluate English answer scripts. “If they are government or aided college lecturers, we can tell them that we will send a recommendation to the Department of Collegiate Education that their salaries be withheld if they fail to turn up for duty. But as they are working with unaided colleges, all we can do is send repeated reminders,” he said. Lecturers are paid ₹10 for each answer script they correct.
Another varsity official pointed out that the number of English answer scripts to be evaluated is the highest compared to that of other subjects. Most students choose English as one of the two compulsory languages in their undergraduate courses.
Bangalore University, too, is in the same conundrum. C. Shivaraju, Registrar (Evaluation), Bangalore University, said that while evaluation of a majority of the answer scripts were nearing completion, only 50% of the English papers have been corrected so far.
T.M. Manjunath, president, Karnataka Government College Teachers’ Association, said this could also be attributed to the shortage of English lecturers. “Most colleges including government ones depend on guest faculty to conduct English classes. However, they are not eligible to report for evaluation,” he said.
Gururaj Desai, State Secretary, Students’ Federation of India, recommended that universities impose a penalty if private colleges do not send their lecturers for duty. “Only a few evaluators turn up for evaluation and the universities should not pressurise them to evaluate more answers scripts per day as it will affect the quality of evaluation. The only solution is to ensure that all eligible lecturers report for duty,” he said.
