HYDERABAD: Private junior colleges strongly demand scrapping of the 25 per cent weightage for intermediate marks in Eamcet, a day after a report revealed that 75 per cent of answer scripts of IPE-2010 were evaluated incorrectly by examiners. Several junior college managements have decided to approach the state government demanding review of policy.

Managements of Narayana and Sri Chaitanya groups of junior colleges said a memorandum in this regard would be submitted to technical education minister Damodar Raja Narasimha in a week’s time. Citing the stand taken by their counterparts in Karnataka on the similar issue, private colleges in the state have decided to challenge in court the 25 per cent weightage being given to inter marks in determining Eamcet ranks, if the state fails to do away with the rule.

According to junior college representatives, the intermediate board does not have enough faculty members to evaluate lakhs of answer papers. “According to the board rules 30 answer scripts should be evaluated by each lecturer in a day. But in reality, they are given double the number of answer scripts. Some even finish their evaluation within three hours whereas they are supposed to complete it in six hours,” said K V Raghunath, vice chairman, Narayana Group of Institutions.

Briefly responding to the issue, Damodar Raja Narasimha told media personnel that once he receives the representation, he will constitute a committee to review the situation and take a call on this. Eamcet authorities also supported scrapping of the 25 per cent weightage to inter marks.

“It takes a long time to announce Eamcet ranks as we are currently forced to wait for intermediate public examination and advanced supplementary marks before declaring ranks,” said an Eamcet official. The Eamcet authorities had in a separate fact finding report, stated that the performance of rural students in Eamcet had not improved even after the introduction of 25 per cent weightage rule.

Meanwhile, government college lecturers said that the state government should introduce the 25 per cent weightage only after strengthening the intermediate examination system. “There are times when guest lecturers are given the task of evaluating the answer scripts,” said P Madhusudan Reddy, secretary, Government Junior College Lecturer’s Association.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, fresh details of errors in inter evaluation surfaced with the officials making the internal report public. According to the report, errors in evaluation included those related to wrong totalling, wrong posting, lapse in awarding marks for correct answers, not evaluating answers properly and awarding either more or less marks. According to the report, the possible reasons for errors were “lack of facilities provided for evaluators and even influence of private parties through bribes”.

Meanwhile, BIE officials said that the report did not reflect the actual facts and hence the correct picture about the evaluation would be released on Wednesday by the board officials. G Balaramaiah, BIE secretary, however, did not state why the contents of the report released by board staff were incorrect. Lecturers attending the evaluation training camps said that they were given instructions that a specific answer key and model answer paper would be given to them during spot evaluation to prevent errors.

Source : TOI

HYDERABAD: Engineering colleges in the state will now be graded on the basis of the Eamcet ranks of their students. According to the three-member high power committee which is in charge of the grading, the college which took in students with the highest cut off ranks in Eamcet will be given the first rank. The logic behind the move is that the college that attracts the best students could be giving quality instruction and so it should be ranked at the top.

But the move has not gone down well with the college managements that have come up with petitions against the grading. On Tuesday morning, engineering college associations submitted a petition to the higher level committee asking it to stop the grading process as it would make admissions impossible in colleges which have come up recently.

The colleges said that grading should be introduced only after they are given enough time to better their facilities. “None of the colleges in the state fulfil all the criteria prescribed by the All India Council for Technical Education ( AICTE) and hence there is no point in ranking all 262 colleges,” said KVK Rao, a management representative of St Mary’s Group of Institutions.

Meanwhile, concluding a meeting with managements, educationists and industry insiders on Tuesday, the members of the high level committee said that as per the instructions of minister for higher education, Damodar Raja Narasimha, there was no move to abandon the grading process.

“The 10 measures of grading have already been decided and colleges will be ranked by mid-February,” said D N Reddy, member of the high power committee.

Source : TOI