No grace marks for PU Biology paper

Rubbishing reports that several questions were out of syllabus in this year’s II PU Biology exam, the department of pre-university education has decided not to give any grace marks this year. Soon after the Biology exam, several students claimed there were questions in the paper which were not part of the NCERT syllabus prescribed to them.

P C Jaffer, director, Department of Pre University Education, said the department had these questions verified by a team of experts.

“We have a list of questions that students had raised doubts about. We have enough material to prove that all these are well within the prescribed NCERT textbooks. We can point out answers for each of these questions from the textbook,” he said.

Jaffer said the paper had been set in a manner that even an average student can easily get a score of 50.

“Out of the 37 questions that students raised doubts about, 36 are from the question bank that was hosted on the department website. This might not be direct but might involve some application,” he said.

The department, while drafting the question paper, maintains a balance by giving three forms of questions - knowledge-based (which is directly out of the textbook), a few which test the understanding of the student, some application questions which are of the highest order and a minimum number which are skill-based.

“As per the blueprint, we must have 15 marks for application-based questions. In this paper, we found 41 questions are of the basic level, of the total 105,” he explained.

Results and evaluation

The members of PU Lecturers Association have threatened to go on a strike if their demands are not fulfilled. Coding and decoding of papers is scheduled to begin on March 20 and evaluation on March 25.

Jaffer said he was hopeful of having a fruitful discussion and get the lecturers report for duty.

There were complaints of shortage of question papers at the time of distribution in several PU colleges. Jaffer said the demand for papers exceeded even the buffer stock at these centres.

“This is a lapse on the part of the principals. Some students asked for a last-minute change in the subject while in a few cases, it was a miscalculation. Haveri and Koppal were major problem areas,” he said.

II PU classes from May 6

The department has proposed that Second PU classes are to commence from May 6.