Marks normalisation makes students wait

Thiruvananthapuram: Though the students who wrote the engineering entrance examinations would have to wait for another month for the ranklist even after the scores of the examination were declared by Education Minister P K Abdul Rabb on Thursday, they could get a rough idea of their ranks by doing a calculation based on normalisation formula.

Normalisation became necessary following the decision to give equal weightage to marks in the qualifying examinations and the entrance examinations while preparing for the engineering entrance results.

The ranks will be calculated by combining the scores in the qualifying examination and in the engineering entrance test at a ratio of 50:50.

The Commissioner for Entrance Examination (CEE) will prepare the rank list using the statistical entities of ‘global mean' and ‘global standard deviation' for carrying out the normalisation procedure. Normalisation is a method for bringing marks scored by candidates in different plus -two board examinations in the country and abroad on the same plane.

For this, the mean and standard deviation of the scores from the CBSE, ICSE, the Kerala Higher Secondary and the Kerala Vocational Higher Secondary examinations would be calculated. The ‘combined mean' and the ‘combined standard deviation' will be derived from this afterwards.

The data of each of these boards from 2009 to 2014 will be used for countering mark variation of different boards. If any board failed to provide the data for the process, the data of CBSE would be used for the purpose.The criticism against the 'normalisation of marks' from the time it was proposed by the previous LDF Government for engineering entrance examinations was that it was biased against CBSE and ICSE stream students.

It led to a series of controversies that even resulted in litigation and protests by parents and CBSE school organisations. The method used for normalisation in 2011 was amended in 2012following protests from various groups.

The standard deviation and mean deviation of CBSE, ICSE, State and VHSE for one year was used for normalisations in 2011. This formula amended in 2012 for computing the results of multiple years is continuing even now. However, there is a criticism that the method of normalisation is also advantageous to state syllabus students.