Question pool soon

Thiruvananthapuram: All is not fair and proper in the SSLC and higher secondary examinations in the state adding to the pain of  the students and their parents. Question paper leaks mar the examinations often.  To set matters right and to ensure  transparency in question setting, the curriculum committee of the general education department has decided to publish a pool of over 1,000 questions for each subject for every class in high schools and higher secondary on a web portal from this year.   Only  questions included in the question bank would be asked for the SSLC and higher secondary examinations.

It may be recalled that in the last SSLC examinations held in March, the model examination questions set by an agency were repeated for mathematics.    This had forced  the government to cancel the examinations and go for a retest.  The government later had decided to take steps to ensure the transparency of examinations from this academic year.

The government also had announced that the question paper of one of the terminal examinations for higher secondary classes would be set  using online question papers.

Another decision was to directly print the question papers for the model examinations for higher secondary classes. At present, model question papers for higher secondary are  printed by teachers’ unions.

The higher secondary teacher and the  examination board chairman  responsible for the repetition of several questions in SSLC mathematics examination were suspended last time.  

The department in its report had wanted the Pareeksha Bhavan to be  specific about the instructions for preparing the question papers. It was found that teachers were  given a month to prepare the questions from the subject textbook, the teachers’ textbook and the model question papers. No proof-reading of the question papers was conducted resulting in large-scale errors.

Mr K.C. Harikrishnan, general secretary,   Kerala School Teachers Association (KSTA) told Deccan Chronicle that at present the question papers for SSLC were  being prepared by higher secondary teachers and those for higher secondary schools by college teachers.

They were not familiar with the actual class room practices as they do not teach in these classes, Mr Harikrishnan said.

Now, all teachers in high school and higher secondary schools can upload the questions in their subjects  for consideration. After they are vetted and corrected by a special group formed by the SCERT, selected questions would be uploaded on the portal.  Only the questions from the pool would  be selected for the examinations, Mr Harikrishnan said.

Teachers would be trained in question- setting during the cluster training  from August. They can upload the question papers on the portal by October 15, he said.

The present system of selecting the question papers from a set of four  prepared by question setters will  end. Pareeksha Bhavan will be free to select a question paper from a  variety of questions.

Mr C. Swaraj, associate programme coordinator of the state resource centre, said that  the question pool will  ensure more transparency.   “However, this will be against the basic objective of  education which is knowledge creation. Some students may even attempt to byheart the entire question pool. It will also end the practice of setting application-oriented questions. The teachers should be given the freedom to choose questions from outside the pool also,” Mr Swaraj said.

Mr T.S. Salim, general secretary, Kerala Pradesh School Teachers Association, said the  concept of question pool was a gimmick. It was the replica of the question bank prepared by the SCERT. It was also not possible to limit the questions for the public examinations to the question bank, Mr Salim said.

It may be recalled that in 2015, the curriculum committee had decided to constitute a question pool under SCERT to prepare higher secondary model question papers. This decision was sabotaged to help the teachers unions which printed the model question papers.

The question papers of SSLC examinations printed by Mr V. Subramanian, owner of a printing press in Chennai, were leaked in 2015.  The involvement of Rajan Chacko who liaised  between the press and Pareeksha Bhavan and his relations with various guide lobbies had come under the scanner then. After the SSLC examinations leak, the state government had decided to print question papers for the model examinations. However, the higher secondary question papers were printed by a teachers association.  This system, which  continued till  last year, will be stopped from this year’s model examinations.