BANGALORE: An examination reform team has asked the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) to train unaided high school teachers in the new evaluation pattern proposed for SSLC exams.
The state government now has to put these teachers through Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE), based on which the new pattern will be introduced in SSLC examinations next year.
MES Teachers College principal H S Ganesh Bhatta, who headed the exam reform team, said, “Lack of training on CCE in private schools is a big challenge for implementing the new SSLC pattern.”
The Department of Public Instruction imparts teacher training for those from government and aided schools through the Department of State Education Research and Training (DSERT), District Institutes for Education and Training (DIET) and Colleges of Teacher Education (CTE). However, private unaided schools do not enjoy this facility, Prof Bhatta said.
In view of this, the Education Department is working on the details of a programme for them, said Commissioner for Public Instruction Mohammed Mohsin.
“We have to design a module for unaided teachers. But we are yet to decide if we should just give them the module and ask them to train themselves or if we can identify institutes that can do this with school managements bearing the costs,” he said.
D Shashi Kumar, organising secretary, Karnataka State Private Schools Managements Federation, said it was the state’s duty to train teachers. “This concept will burden us. The syllabus gives us little time. There are 220 days in an academic year and schools will reopen soon,” he said.
80:20 Explained
Prof Bhatta and his team have worked out the new scheme, called the 80:20 pattern, for evaluating students who take the SSLC exams next year. While students will write theory exams for full marks, it will later be quantified to consider 80 per cent of the marks.
Similarly, students will undergo formative assessment (internal), which will be reduced to 20 marks for each subject (expect first language, where it will be 25 marks).
“We have suggested formative assessment to be done at four levels, each carrying 50 marks. Of the total 200 marks, we will take 20 per cent of what the student has scored. Teachers will be free to choose the activity of their choice which will be made known to students in advance,” Prof Bhatta explained.
Therefore, if a student scores 160 marks in these four levels, it will be divided by 200 and multiplied by 20. This way, a student’s internal assessment marks in that subject will be 16 out of 20.
“The total internal assessment marks in six subjects, including first language, will be 125. On the other hand, the total theory marks will be 500, which is 80 per cent of 625,” he said.
For example, if a student scored 600 out of 625, his marks card will have 480 out of 500.
He said private candidates will not be evaluated on the 80:20 pattern. In a survey of more than a 1,000 teachers, 55 per cent opted for the 80:20 pattern.
Prof Bhatta said the expert team was against the idea of reducing the 100-mark paper to 80 marks owing to the vastness of the syllabus. “If we reduced the question paper size, we would be unable to give weightage to all chapters,” he said.