By Joseph Varghese/Staff Reporter


India’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will introduce an on-screen evaluation system for some subjects of Class XII from the 2013-14 academic year, a senior official said yesterday.
This will bring more transparency to the evaluation process, CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi said, adding there were cases of discrepancies in awarding marks especially where there is scope for subjectivity.
Joshi is in Doha for a training session of CBSE International Curriculum teachers.
He said the new system was tested for the Class X board examination of the Delhi region last year.
“Last year 250,000 answer books were scanned and given to two teachers each for evaluation. If there was no great difference between the two evaluations, the higher score was accepted. If not, a third person was assigned to evaluate the answer book,” Joshi told Gulf Times in an interview.
He also  said that more training of examiners and evaluators are also planned to solve the issues related to evaluation.
The idea of on-screen evaluation came up as there was no revaluation system in CBSE, though students can access their examination books after the marks are awarded.
Joshi said this was done successfully without any complication and it will be applied for some subjects of class XII from 2014.
“It is sure to be implemented for English in Class XII from next examinations,” he added.
The CBSE chairman also said that there was no plan to make the Class XII examination a graded one in the near future.
“For higher education most of the universities or institutions insist on numerical scores. This makes it difficult to replace marks with grades for Class XII. We have plans to make Class XII graded but not very soon. We are consulting with the higher education officials to find a way out to solve the issue. When they come out with a suitable scenario we will implement grading in Class XII.”
As for the Open Book Examination system, introduced recently by the CBSE, the official said it will be implemented from this academic year for Classes IX and XI.
“This is not an open book examination but open text assessment,” Joshi said. “For Class IX, this will be part of the summative assessment of the second term and for the final examination for grade XI. This will be based on case studies given to the students which are part of the curriculum of each subject.”
Joshi said a certain percentage of the examination will be allocated for this and case studies are given three-four months in advance on some real issue.
“The issues will be connected with all the concepts taught to the students. They are not general case studies but cases related to topics in the subjects. The case studies are connected with the syllabus.”
He also pointed out that sample question papers will be given to students.
“These are real studies or real life situations and connected with the syllabus. But the questions will be out of the textbooks. A circular is on our website and parents can access it to have a better idea about the concept,” he added.

Schools to be accredited, says CBSE chief


The Central Board of Secondary Education will soon initiate a process to accredit all the schools under it, chairman Vineet Joshi said yesterday. There will also be room for teachers to express their concerns and opinions anonymously through the process. An announcement to this effect will be made soon. Joshi said once the announcement is made, the schools have to be accredited within three years. He also said this process will, to a certain extent, solve issues regarding the salary and working conditions of the teachers. He also said there will not be any ranking of the schools. “There will only be accredited and non-accredited schools.”
The official said the practice would be extremely useful for parents as they would be able know more about the schools. “There are seven domains of assessment and we will inform the parents about each school. Some of the major domains are good academics, performance in co-curricular areas and managing the finances in the right way.” He said “now parents go by word of mouth. They will have a more authentic third party information about the schools hereafter. If any school does not meet the criteria, it will be disaffiliated from the CBSE.” Joshi said teachers’ satisfaction is a major yardstick for the accreditation of the schools. “Teachers can anonymously record their opinion about the school. This can be about their salaries, working atmosphere as well as other facilities. This, I hope will solve many of the existing anomalies in the perks and salary of the teachers.” He added that CBSE had discussions with various governments in resolving the salary issues.
The chairman also said that if a student needed to change the board after Class X examination he or she has to take the board examination. In many cases, the other boards do not approve of the school-based examination for admission to Class XI. He said he had talks with the Kerala government on this. “Even the school-based examination is under the CBSE guidelines and equivalent to the board examination but many state boards are not ready to accept it. We are trying to convince them,” he added.