Teachers are up in arms against an order issued by the Karnataka State Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB), which has allotted less than a week for the evaluation of around 1.66 crore answer sheets of Class 5, 8, and 9 board examination (Summative Assessment-2).
After a Division Bench of the High Court of Karnataka gave the green signal, the KSEAB resumed the stalled board exams on Monday. The examination for Class 5 was completed on Tuesday, and the examination for Class 8 and 9 will end on Thursday.
The KSEAB issued an order to complete the evaluation of answer sheets of Class 5 students by March 31, and the rest by April 2. The KSEAB has decided to announce the board exam results of Class 5, 8, and 9 by April 10,
The major reason for the opposition to this order is that the KSEAB has suggested that a teacher evaluate an average of 40 to 80 answer sheets every day.
“The evaluation of Class 10 exam answer sheets has been conducted for at least 20 days. Also, the KSEAB allows a teacher to evaluate an average of 15 to 20 answer papers in a day. Why is there a different yardstick for evaluation of answer papers of Class 5, 8, and 9?” said a teacher.
It has been decided to conduct inter-cluster-wise evaluation of answer sheets at the taluk centre. Later, the written exam and internal assessment scores of the students will be aggregated and converted into grades, and entered in the Student Achievement Tracking System (SATS) portal. Then, the results will be declared by the respective school principals on April 10.
While each evaluator of Class 5 has been instructed to evaluate 80 answer sheets per day, each evaluator of Class 8 has been told to evaluate 60 answer sheets each day, and each evaluator of Class 9 has been given a target of 40 answer sheets per day.
About 1.66 crore answer papers to be evaluated
This time, around 28 lakh students have appeared for the board exams of Class 5, 8, and 9. Examinations are being conducted for four subjects for Class 5 and for seven subjects each, including Physical Education, for Class 8 and 9. Putting all these answer sheets together, around 1.66 crore answer papers have to be evaluated.
“This is an unscientific process. A maximum of 20 answer sheets per day are given to an evaluator during the evaluation of Class 10 exams. Yet, now we are told to evaluate 40 to 80 answer papers per day, which is unscientific. This will increase the pressure on the teachers, and it will be difficult to evaluate the answer sheets objectively,” said a teacher of a government higher primary school in Bengaluru.
“Teachers have recently completed the annual exams of Class 1 to 4 and 6, and are engrossed in the evaluation. And, the Class 10 exams will be held till April 6. Almost all high school teachers have been deputed for the examination duty. In addition, many teachers are deputed for Lok Sabha election duties. There is a shortage of teachers for examination work, and teachers are working under a lot of pressure. In such a situation, it is inhumane to order completion of the evaluation of the answer sheets of Class 5, 8, and 9 in just four days. The board should extend the period for evaluation and change the date for declaration of results for Class 5, 8, and 9,” another government high school teacher demanded.
Gopalakrishna H.N., Director, KSEAB, told The Hindu: “Most of teachers have been deputed for election work and Class 10 examinations. The answer sheets should be evaluated as soon as the Class 10 exams are over. Along with this, teachers also have other office work. With all this work on their hands, we suggested completing the evaluation of Class 5, 8 and 9 board exam answer papers by April 2. Also, since the pages of answer sheets of these classes are less, we have fixed a shorter period for evaluation. However, we have received objections from teachers that the time given for evaluation is not enough. Appropriate action will be taken to extend the time after discussing this with the higher authorities.”
