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
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