Date:30/04/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/04/30/stories/2005043017720300.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Trimester system gets good response from all

Staff Reporter

Study finds a large majority of teachers backing it

BANGALORE: The trimester system introduced for students from classes I to IX from the academic year 2004-05 by the Education Department seems to have been accepted well by teachers, students and parents.

That is what a study conducted by the Policy Planning Unit, a joint collaboration of the State Government and the Azim Premji Foundation reveals.

According to the study, which was recently concluded, 80 per cent of the teachers have opined that the system is either excellent or good and around 20 per cent of the teachers said that it is satisfactory. Among head teachers, 78 per cent said the system is excellent or good and 12 per cent responded saying it is operational at a satisfactory level.

More than 85 per cent of teachers have reported that they have been teaching life skills and value-based education and nearly 86 per cent of teachers from rural and urban areas have conducted bridge courses for the students. As many as 99.3 per cent of teachers prepared the question papers for the trimester and were able to flexibly include the contents required for the trimester system, according to the study.

The study was conducted between October 2004 and March this year and covered 2,452 schools in the State. Of these, 51 per cent were Government schools and the remaining were aided and unaided schools.

Grading system

Even though 87.3 per cent of parents said they understood the system and 78.7 per cent knew that there was scope to only give grades to children, many of them were not too happy about the grading mechanism. In the trimester system, a child's performance is rated in terms of A, B+, B, C+ and C grades.

The A grade is given to all students who score between 75 to 100 per cent in the examinations. Some parents felt that such a system would unfair to students who scored extremely high marks.

Gurumurthy, Leader of the Policy Planning Unit said the Government was considering having another grade of A+ for such students and nothing had been decided as yet.

The unit has suggested that there was a need to strengthen the teaching of non-cognitive subjects such as yoga, pranayama and life skills in the trimester system.