Simplification needed for both examination and evaluation - TOI - 24/01/2008

VARSITY WOES

Teachers threaten boycott of evaluation process

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: Only 200 examiners had to assess 1.92 lakh exam papers for Accountancy and Indirect/Direct Taxation for the TYBCom exam in 2007 and 1,000 teachers had to assess 6 lakh exam papers for the semester examinations in engineering.
The Bombay University and College Teachers’ Union released these facts at a press conference on Wednesday. “If the university doesn’t take cognisance of our plight, we will be forced to boycott the entire assessment process,’’ BUCTU president C Sadasivan said.
In several instances, the tremendous load of examination papers results in teachers spending their vacations correcting answer sheets. What’s more, BUCTU has complained that for several self-financing courses like Bachelor in Mass Media students are taught mainly by visiting faculty and temporary faculty whose service is terminated before the examinations. Hence the burden of correcting exam papers falls on the shoulders of the “ever-shrinking’’ regular faculty.
In addition, faculty from other departments who have finished correcting their quota of exam papers are often forced to correct papers for these self-financing courses.
“We want the university to give teachers leave to compensate for every single day of the vacations during which they had to correct
exam papers,’’ BUCTU general secretary Tapati Mukhopadhyay said.
It’s not just teachers who’re affected by the current assessment scheme. BUCTU feels that teachers will not be able to do justice to individual exam papers during the stressful assessment process; this will result in students too losing out when it comes to a fair marking system. “In order to ensure quality assessment, an examiner must be given a maximum of 10 days to assess the papers and not more than 400 papers to assess,’’ said Mukhopadhyay.
At least 500 teachers plan to go on a one-day token hunger strike on Friday if the university does not pay heed to their demands. TOI reported this on Tuesday. In addition to demanding a fair assessment system for examinations, BUCTU also wants the chancellor to take action against the vice-chancellor for tampering with the electoral rolls less than two weeks before the university senate elections to the teachers’ constituency in 2005. Polls have been held up for the last 18 months. “There is nobody to represent undergraduate teachers in the senate,’’said Mukhopadhyay.
Teachers will also protest the “dismantling of the university’s grant-in-aid system,’’ whereby more and more aided colleges are closing down and there is a corresponding increase in the number of private colleges mushrooming across the state, making higher education out of reach for lower-income groups.