Team Herald
PANJIM: Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (GBSHSE) has decided to go back to its traditional method of correcting answer sheets of students appearing for the board exams, thus replacing digital evaluation that had been introduced last year.
Board Secretary Shivkumar Jangam confirmed that answer sheets of students appearing for Class XII and Class X exams in March and April respectively will be corrected manually. “We are not going for digital correction this year. All the answer sheets will be corrected manually as it is more convenient and authentic,” he told Herald.
GBSHSE had tied up with IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to introduce the digital evaluation concept, despite protests from sections of teachers. As a pilot project in 2015, part of the correction process for Class XII and Class X supplementary exams was computerised. The same process was applied during the 2015-16 Board exams when most papers underwent digital corrections. The officials had refused to bow down to the demands of the teachers but the process was marred with allegations of faulty correction.
The board launched an inquiry into one incident where a Class XII Commerce topper was replaced by another after re-evaluation. Several students who had applied for re-evaluation of papers scored marks higher than originally declared. Chairman J Rebello had asserted that it was a normal trend but ordered an inquiry into the episode.
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Almost 17K students to answer Class XII exams
A total of 16,913 Class XII students will appear for the Board exams scheduled to begin from March 1 across 16 centres. GBSHSE has added a new centre at Mashem-Canacona due to the increase in the number of candidates. The number of students appearing this academic year is over a 1000 more than last year. In 2015-16 there were 15,410 students enrolled for the Class XII exams of which 13,885 cleared them, recording the highest ever pass percentage of 90.10, surpassing the previous year’s 88.10 percent.
