Action Against 214 Teachers For Blunders
Ishrita Gupta is the class XII CBSE board topper in Nagpur today because she didn’t accept her low marks in political science, and opted for re-evaluation. A brilliant student, Ishrita had more than 95 marks in all other subjects. Re-evaluation showed 17 of her answers had been incorrectly marked, and her score increased by 22.
Rohit Malik (name changed) from Delhi also saw his marks go up after re-evaluation as he had not been scored on three correct answers. In fact, every second applicant for reevaluation this year has gained marks. In all, 9,111 class XII candidates applied to have their papers checked again, and mistakes were found in 4,632 cases.
The common mistakes include giving zero marks for correct answers, and not evaluating a series of answers. CBSE has initiated action against at least 214 teachers for “huge” blunders. Of these, 81 are under the Dehradun regional office and 55 under Allahabad.
Students can apply for reevaluation only after seeking retotalling. TOI had reported on June 24 that totalling errors were also high even though maths and computer science teachers were put on the job this year.
‘Around 50k evaluators dealing with 61.34L copies’
To prevent such mistakes, CBSE lets two teachers evaluate each paper, and board officials say the errors have declined. A comparison with previous years is not possible because, last year, re-evaluation was done case-by-case on a Delhi high court order, and CBSE has not shared data for re-evaluation in 2016.
Anurag Tripathi, secretary, CBSE, told TOI the two-evaluator system is successful as “99.6% of the copies are correctly evaluated.” The 0.4% error rate, he said, exists because of the pressure on evaluators: “Around 50,000 evaluators are dealing with 61.34 lakh copies.” He added that the board had decided to re-introduce reevaluation so that students didn’t suffer due to errors. “We have tried to minimise the errors, which right from verification to re-evaluation are at an all-time low, and CBSE will continue its efforts.”
However, school principals said the sharp increase in marks after re-evaluation is something new. The principal of a South Delhi school suggested that CBSE email answer scripts to students since evaluation is centralised and all the marks are uploaded online in real-time.
“The process of retotalling and re-evaluation will become simpler as those whose copies are clean won’t apply.”
Source – Times of India, Ahmedabad – 25/7/2018
