BENGALURU: Schools in the state which are affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) have decided to write to the board seeking reconsideration of a recent circular mandating psychometric evaluation of all employees.
This comes after school managements expressed difficulty in conducting the evaluation. It is a test designed to measure a person’s suitability for a role, based on characteristics and aptitude. CBSE issued the circular on safety of students with a new set of guidelines on September 28 after the incident in a private school in Gurugram, Haryana, where an eight-year-old boy was murdered by a bus conductor inside the school toilet. Schools were given two months to complete the exercise.
The CBSE school managements association, Karnataka, is convening a meeting with school management representatives next week to discuss the issue. Association member Mansoor Ali Khan said, “We will have a meeting with all management representatives and prepare a communication to the board. Many schools are unwilling to implement the circular as it calls for psychometric evaluation of teaching staff too.”
According to management representatives, schools are facing logistical problems in implementing the order. “It should not be a knee-jerk reaction to a particular incident. Instead, the authorities must study the pros and cons of the evaluation and then ask us to implement it,” said Mansoor. “The circular just asks us to do it within two months, but there is no clarity on how to go about it. We cannot ask employees to get it done on their own. We feel that conducting such tests will affect the morale of employees,” said a principal of a private school.