Telangana to introduce jumbling system in state schools

Hyderabad: Though the Telangana State government is against the scrapping of the no-detention system in schools, it intends to introduce a tracking system to monitor children's progress.

Like the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the TS government wants to introduce a jumbling system of evaluation for Summative Assessment exams in state syllabus schools so students' performance is accurately measured.

The system is likely to be introduced in the next six months for the upcoming SA exams in schools, but it is expected only for Classes VI and IX.

Like the CBSE system, state syllabus schools too have to follow the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) with Formative and Summative Assessment exams.  Following the CBSE system, the government has scrapped the middle Summative Assessment exam, which would be like a half yearly. But evaluation of the Summative Assessment answer papers is still done locally in the same school.

The TS government wants to introduce a jumbling system whereby the Summative Assessment answer scripts of one school are evaluated by another in the same city. "We are against scrapping of the no-detention system in schools. But even then some kind of a tracking mechanism needed to monitor whether a child is learning or not,” a senior TS Education ministry official said.

In the current setup with local evaluation of answer scripts, it is believed that marks awarded are more than those deserved by the students. This is done to portray that students in the school are performing really well though learning is not really measured.

“Teachers are awarding as many marks as they want because it will reflect on their performance and teaching standards. But it is not correct. We have to introduce this jumbling system at least in the six months. We will introduce it for the next Summative Assessment exams at any cost, at least in the 6th and 9th standards,” the official said. But the new system wouldn't be a contradiction to the no-detention policy, officials claim, since it is simply to monitor the real progress and learning of students and not as a qualifying exam.

“Jumbling system is just to strengthen the CCE . We have said this in the past as well that we are for the no-detention policy but we need to strengthen the CCE,” another official in the school education department of the TS Education ministry said.