Protests by examiners over a Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education (TANSCHE) mandate increasing the number of semester examination answer papers to be evaluated by a teacher per day from 40 to 50 has put State universities on the back foot over the past few days.
In the latest incident on Wednesday, faced with a valuation boycott by teachers, the University of Madras reduced the valuation workload to 40 papers per day. Earlier, college teachers drafted to evaluate English paper boycotted duty seeking withdrawal of the new mandate. They assembled at the Shasun Jain College for Women in Chennai.
On Tuesday, the language paper teachers had boycotted valuation work at the Ethiraj College in Chennai - the nodal centre for the subject. Teachers working in affiliated colleges have been demanding that they be allowed to correct only 40 answer scripts per day .
In Coimbatore, teachers boycotted valuation duty on Monday pressing the demand prompting the Bharathiar University authorities to reduce their valuation workload to 40 papers per day. The TANSCHE had on May 16 written to all universities saying that teachers must correct 50 answer scripts of undergraduate students and 40 papers of postgraduate students per day.
Hitherto only 40 UG and 30 PG papers were valued daily. The regulatory body had also upwardly revised the examiners’ remuneration. “Even if it takes a minimum of 10 minutes to go through an answer script, it would take three hours to complete valuation of 20 papers in one session. Teachers will not be able to qualitatively evaluate the paper,” a member of the Association of University Teachers said.
“For the Plus Two board examination, a teacher is given only 24 answer scripts a day. We are already correcting 40 answer papers,” he pointed out.
With the boycott intensifying, University of Madras Vice Chancellor R Thandavan met with a teachers’ delegation in the evening.
“I have agreed to heed to their demand. The valuation duty will recommence without any problem from Thursday. As for the increased remuneration suggested by TANSCHE, I will take a decision after placing the matter before the syndicate,” he told Express.
