In an order issued on Friday, the Department of Primary and Secondary Education said that a general exam will be held for students of class 7 in government, aided and private state syllabus schools in the second week of March.
"The question paper will be prepared in one centre and will be distributed to schools (similar to SSLC board exam). But the evaluation will be strict compared to other grades. The result of the individual will be uploaded to the Student Achievement Tracking System (SATS) software," an excerpt of the order copy reads.
For the purpose of distributing question paper, SATS data will be utilised. Hence, schools have been asked to update student-related information by February 5. An order issued by KSQAAC states that if there is any discrepancy in the medium, student number, language subjects etc of students, KSQAAC is not responsible
"As per the National education policy of 2019, with the objective of improving quality of learning a decision has been taken under the leadership of the education minister that before they write SSLC, students should face a public exam in some grade. The decision has been made after aking opinions and discussing with teachers, parents and other stakeholders, while also keeping in mind CCE (Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation). State syllabus of all private, government and aided schools will write general evaluation exam in the 7th standard. Rs 640.664 lakhs will be needed to implement this," the order from the Education department reads.
"Students should not get stressed regarding this. In order to prepare them for competitive exam environment, it is important they write this exam. From this exercise, we will get information on quality of learning and teaching at district and school level and help improve the same, through framing better policies. It will also help students understand what level they are at. It will create motivation for parents so they can know learning progress of their child," it goes on to add.
For implementing this, the government will either take funds from Centralised Admission Cell (CAT) or Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) budget of 2019-2020 and give it to Karnataka School Quality Assessment and Accreditation Council (KSQAAC), on the condiion that KSQAAC will pay the money back.
The exam will be conducted within the school's own premises and regular classrooms and will replace the term end assessment, following the same pattern and will be based on syllabus of the second semester. The invigilators will be the school teachers. The preparation of papers and printing will be done by KSEEB and KSQAAC. Evaluation will be at the school level.