THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University’s (KTU) ‘Web-Enabled Exam Management System’, which triggered a controversy due to the involvement of a private agency, has been scrapped.
The decision to scrap the examination reform was taken at a meeting chaired by Education Minister P K Abdu Rabb here on Monday. Senior officials of Higher Education Department, KTU officials and representatives of students and teachers organisations participated in the meet.
The students’ and teachers’ representatives fiercely opposed the examination reform saying that the involvement of a private agency would compromise on the secrecy of the examination. KTU officials told the meeting that the private agency was only entrusted with providing the software for the examination and also the hardware at the examination centres.
The meeting decided that the examination could be conducted in the online format only after the university developed an indigenous software for the examination and procures the hardware required for its conduct.
The BTech and MTech examinations, slated to be held in the new format later this month, had been postponed and would be held in the conventional format in January, the meeting decided.
The Web-Enabled Exam management system had proposed doing away with valuation camps and introducing online valuation in its place.
Also, the question papers were proposed to be sent online to the examination centres an hour before the examination. The MBA examination conducted by KTU in the new format had enabled the publication of results within a record time of three days.