Burnt papers: State mulls on marks

VILLUPURAM: Even as state education officials remain undecided on what method to adopt while awarding marks to students whose answer sheets were destroyed in a fire a few days ago, 10th standard students, their parents and teachers from Villupuram are a worried lot. For it was the English paper II answer sheets of 12,000-odd students from this district that were destroyed in the fire in Vellore.

Though the school education minister announced in the assembly that these students need not sit for the examination again, students and parents are gripped with anxiety over the methodology to be adopted by the authorities.

In Chennai, the directorate of government examinations is clueless. Officials say they will wait till minister Thangam Thennarasu returns from a visit to Singapore.

A joint director and a deputy director of government examinations are in Vellore trying to find out if any of the 12,888 mark sheets can be salvaged. There has been only one precedent. Many years ago, about 300 answer sheets fell from a train. As the number was small, the students were asked to write the exam again.

Two methods are being considered for awarding marks for the destroyed English paper II answer-sheets: applying the marks the students had got in English paper I for the second paper as well, and considering the marks they had got in their quarterly and half-yearly exams.

Some educationists are against the idea of awarding marks based on quarterly and half-yearly marks. "It is a language paper. I feel there will not be any major difference in performance between paper I and paper II. We can regard their score in paper I as a standard and award the same marks for paper II," said Kamaraj Municipal Boys' Higher Secondary School headmaster C Ramamoorthy.

Villupuram Girls' Higher Secondary School assistant headmaster P Chandrababu, while endorsing Ramamoorthy's views, advocated scrapping the two-paper pattern for language papers.

However, some students are unhappy about taking the marks they had obtained in paper I as a criterion. "English paper I was very tough when compared to paper II. But we were confident of making amends by doing better in paper II," said J Nazar, a student of Kamaraj Municipal Boys' Higher Secondary School.

Villupuram chief education officer P A Naresh said the performances of students in earlier exams would not be a true indicator of their performance in the public exam. "Students had ample time for preparation before the final exam, and we need to arrive at a scientific approach."