HYDERABAD: The Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) and the Telangana Government Junior Lecturers Association (TGJLA) have locked horns over the online evaluation, which has been proposed for the first time this year. While the lecturers association has expressed the apprehension that the online evaluation could go wrong and spark student suicides, Commissioner of the Board Navin Mittal has clarified that the government has taken this decision in the interests of the students and assured that the system is transparent.
This further snowballed into a major controversy with lecturers association president T Madhusudhan Reddy and Navin Mittal levelling personal accusations against each other. While Madhusudhan Reddy said that the new evaluation system would prove detrimental to the interests of around 25 lakh students, Mittal asserted that the objective was to ensure greater transparency in the evaluation system.
However, the personal rivalry between the two was not confined to a war of words. The TSBIE lodged a complaint against Madhusudhan Reddy at Begum Bazaar Police Station on Monday for trespassing into the Board’s office, threatening the officials and illegally trying to access official information.
The Board had recently invited tenders for an on screen digital evaluation system which involves scanning and uploading answer sheets of the students on a software where lecturers can evaluate by reading on a computer screen and allocate marks digitally. The TSBIE wants to implement the system from this year onwards.
Some teachers’ organisations in the State opposed the move saying that nobody was informed about the decision and the evaluators had not been trained to evaluate the answer sheets of over 25 lakh students. They termed it irrational to introduce the new system when the examinations are scheduled to start within 45 days.
Madhusudhan Reddy said that the implementation of the system would lead to the repetition of 2019 when digitalisation of marks allegedly led to many students ending their lives after failing in the exam.
On the other hand, Mittal insisted that the system was foolproof. “All the answers will be scanned and sent to evaluators. There will be model answers to questions on the basis of which the evaluators can allocate numbers or select ‘not answered’ when needed. The answer sheet will not be closed until all the answers have been evaluated,” he explained.
Mittal said that in 2019, the totalling was done manually leading to mistakes. “In the new system, the totalling will be done automatically. A login id will be provided to teachers enabling them to evaluate from anywhere. It will also save cost of setting up evaluation centres, provision of food, tea and travelling expenses of lecturers,” Mittal said. He cited the examples of Osmania University, B R Ambedkar Open University and Board of Technical Education where answer sheets are being evaluated through an online system.