Many students who appeared in the Staff Selection Commission-conducted Combined Graduate Level (CGL) examination, 2017 (Tier-I) are demanding that scores of the test be normalised. They claim that the difficulty level was higher in the tests conducted after August 16. A total of 15,43,962 candidates appeared in this recruitment exam which was conducted in 43 batches across the country. The exam was held from August 5 to August 23 and the results are expected to release on October 31. Raju Kumar, a candidate, has started a campaign on Facebook where other aspirants are sharing their grievances and demanding normalisation of scores. "After the answer key was released, we analysed that the questions were comparatively difficult for those who appeared in and before August 16 sessions," he said. They are planning to file a case in the Central Administrative Tribunal - a body established for adjudication of disputes with respect to recruitment exams. Speaking to indianexpress.com, Neha Goel, community manager at Grade Up, said that after every exam they conduct a poll to analyse candidate's performance. "We compared the data and found those who have appeared from August 5 to 18, their average marks comes around 120-122 marks while those who have given test from August 19 to 23, scores around 130 marks. In CGL, even one mark makes difference in the future of candidates and therefore, it is high time SSC starts normalisation of scores," said Goel. Most of the entrance and recruitment exams such as JEE, IBPS, SBI, etc are held in various shifts and they use normalisation of scores. What is normalisation? The exam conducting body makes a simple formula and fixed parameters to calculate scores. Once the answers are checked, the normalised marks of a candidate are calculated corresponding to the actual marks secured by the candidate. Anil Nagar, founder of Career Power coaching institute, said that major entrance exams in India use statistical normalisation process to prepare scores of candidates. "I don't think the difficulty level of any two exam papers are same or 100 per cent equal. SSC should start using this method to normalise scores of student, who gave SSC CGL 2017. Since exam was conducted in multiple shifts, normalisation is a must to ensure a level playing field to all aspirants," said Nagar. Earlier, exams were held in a single shift and each aspirant was given the same question paper. But in the multiple shifts, each session has its own difficulty level which may vary by one per cent. "With technology, exam conducting bodies have data through which they can find out which question took the maximum time of the aspirant and can, therefore, calculate which questions were comparatively more difficult," said Nagar.
