CBSE plans: Teachers happy but8230;

NEW DELHI, February 12: There were varied responses by academicians and parents' organisations to a Central Board of Secondary Education ...

NEW DELHI, February 12: There were varied responses by academicians and parents8217; organisations to a Central Board of Secondary Education CBSE announcement that they will be working to improve the present valuation system and also the curriculum.

Most people also expressed apprehensions about how foolproof the scheme would actually be. According to Professor B.P. Khandelwal, chairman, CBSE, the board will be updating its curriculum by 2002. 8220;The new front-line curriculum framework will supplement the developments and do away with any redundant information that present text books continue to teach,8221; he had said at a press conference here yesterday.

Said Shyama Chona, principal, Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram: 8220;I have been trying to get the CBSE to listen to me on this for a very long time. The CBSE has this habit of getting people from the universities to prepare the syllabus who have no idea what is happening in schools. If only they let the school teachers and the academicians related to the schools make the curriculum.8221; The CBSE chairman also said that introducing changes also meant that there will be certain deletions from the present syllabus to avoid burdening children. From now on, the CBSE will also be announcing board results on the Internet. And to facilitate quicker verification, the CBSE will be sending all the results to the Delhi University on a floppy, Khandelwal said.

Annie Koshy, principal of the St Mary8217;s School said that a lot would depend on how the board decides to execute its scheme on new subjects. 8220;A lot of practical exams in certain schools are rigged and the board can do nothing about it. And as far as introducing new schemes are concerned, earlier too, the CBSE had introduced a vocational scheme but there were not many takers.8221; She said this was because people continue to harbour old notions about education.

She also suggested that the board introduce bonus points for those who did opt for a different subject. Referring to the CBSE circular asking schools to send their teachers for evaluating papers, Koshy said most schools shirked this responsibility. To involve the schools, CBSE has also decided to introduce the school certification as mandatory for a student along with the board certificate from 2000. And for examiners, the CBSE has revised the answer-book format by providing vertical columns to remove totalling and transferring errors.

8220;One co-ordinator will post the marks on the title cover of the answer-book and after calculating the grand total, will write the same on the title cover as well at the end of the last question attempted by the candidate,8221; he said.

8220;And it will be for the second co-ordinator to collate the marksheet on which the examiner will post his marks with those posted on the answer book,8221; he explained. This sheet, to be later deposited in the records, will ensure that there is no confusion in the transfers, he said.

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He added that a rule is also being formulated whereby not more than 20 answer-scripts will be evaluated by a teacher in a day to avoid negligence on the part of examiners. The CBSE will use its Outlair system, a specially designed software, to point out any inconsistencies in the data.