Erring evaluators to be penalised

 The disciplinary action varies from issuing warnings to cut in increments to suspension.
Primary and Secondary Education minister Vishweshwara Hegde Kageri said that notices had been served to those found committing mistakes in evaluation.

Kageri denied reports that erratic evaluation was because the evaluators were in a hurry as the government was keen on announcing the results within a short period.

No pressure

The minister said that there was no pressure on teachers. For many years teachers had been asked to evaluate only 22 answer scripts a day.

The number of papers had not been increased. He said most of the mistakes were related to totalling the marks. Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board director D S Rajanna said that the board had ordered for suspension of six teachers.
Of them four work in aided colleges, two each in Tumkur and Chikmagalur.
The private school managements had been asked to suspend them.

The disciplinary action against erring teachers may be issuing warnings, cut in increments and in case of serious mistakes the concerned would be suspended. “It all depends on gravity of the mistake committed by the evaluator. For minor mistakes the evaluator gets warning”, he said.

However, Rajanna said that the Board has found more cases of erratic evaluation than it did in the previous year.

“Last year there were about 600 cases of erratic evaluation. This time the number of cases may go up slightly. The revaluation process is still on”, he said.

There were reports that teachers of Kannada medium schools were asked to evaluate English medium papers and that was the reason for mistakes.

However, Rajanna said that the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board  had allotted English medium papers only to those who taught in English.

Three types of mistakes

The board noticed three types of mistakes committed by evaluators: errors in totalling the marks, overlooking one or two pages of answer scripts without evaluating and the third one was mistake in entering the total marks on the facing sheet.

“Besides, there is also a subjective element in evaluation. Particularly for essay-type answers an evaluator may prefer to award 4 marks, while the other, in revaluation, may award either 3.5 or even less. The difference in marks allotment alter the marks tally”, he said.