COIMBATORE: In a major restructuring, the Tamil Nadu State Council of Educational Research and Training (TNSCERT) will implement a common question paper system for Classes 6 to 12 in government schools from this academic year, which was currently done at the district level.
Sources said that ahead of this, TNSCERT handed over the preparation of question papers of at least two subjects to teachers from each district under the supervision of lecturers at the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET).
The question paper would then be sent to TNSCERT after approval, and then to all districts. This common question paper system will be implemented in the coming quarterly examinations in September. A circular released from TNSCERT on August 24 notified the principals of DIET to complete preparing two sets of question papers (in Tamil and English) by September 2.
A chief educational officer told TNIE, “Usually, concerned officers from the district school education department prepare question papers from Classes 6 to 12 at the district level. These question papers are distributed to high and higher secondary schools for examinations, except the board exams for Classes 10, 11 and 12. Now, the department has cancelled district-level question paper preparation. Instead, subject teachers will prepare common question papers, which will be used across the state.”
A senior official from TNSCERT told TNIE, “Students’ learning outcome was poor in the last National Achievement Survey and State Level Achievement Survey. When we tried to find out the reason, district-level question papers were prepared with most book-back questions. Teachers prepared the questions without considering students’ learning objectives and outcomes.
During the achievement survey, students’ learning outcomes were found to be poor except for a few. Considering this, SCERT planned to prepare the common question papers. We would set the questions with lower-order thinking, middle-order thinking and higher-order thinking through a common question paper system to assess the student’s learning outcome subject-wise correctly.”