Date:09/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/09/stories/2008120951600300.htm

Karnataka - Mysore

Call to review evaluation process

Staff Correspondent

Students inadequately tested, teachers overloaded: VC

MYSORE: S. Ramachandran, Vice-Chancellor, University of Madras, has observed that nowadays, many factors such as individual bias, temperament and attitude, and physical and mental coordination are making evaluation of papers a tough job.

“All aspects of the individual’s personality, for example, power of observation, character, behaviour and conceptualisation are not tested. Rather only memory power is evaluated,” he said, while delivering a lecture at the National Testing Service (NTS)-India at the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) here on Monday.

He said that teachers were overloaded with evaluation work and cited an example of a teacher evaluating 60 answer books of 30 pages each in five hours.

“Hence, the whole process of evaluation should be reviewed by NTS-India,” he suggested.

Prof. Ramachandran elaborated on the role of “testing” and “evaluation” at all levels of education, starting from primary school to research. “The right type of evaluation is the need of the hour in each and every field,” he said.

He also said that there was a big gap between the rural and urban population in terms of education facilities and performance.

Pon Subbiah, head, NTS, CIIL, Mysore, spoke on the activities of MILES (Multipurpose Indian Language Evaluation System) and the NTS and explained the role of the NTS.

He also enumerated the series of steps taken by the NTS for creating a comprehensive basis for developing tools of evaluation to cover various purposes such as aptitude, achievement and proficiency.