BY OUR STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI, March 16: Even after success in its maiden venture, the Board of Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA) has to restrict digital evaluation of answer scripts in the HSLC/AHM examitions in 2018 only General Mathematics due to fund crunch.
The SEBA was successful in its pilot project to digitally evaluate answer scripts of General Mathematics in HSLC/AHM examitions 2017 by motivating evaluators. But despite success in the maiden venture the board has faced fund crunch as one of the main hassle to extend digital evaluation to other subjects in this examitions.
SEBA’s Controller of Examitions yan Jyoti Sarma said digital evaluation process is an expensive exercise and it is not possible to digitally evaluate all the subjects from the board’s resources. Unless the State Government extends fincial assistance, the SEBA will not be able to introduce digital evaluation to other subjects barring General Mathematics, he said.
In digital evaluation, the answer scripts are scanned on the office premises of the board and the scanned copies are sent to the respective evaluation zones. Scanning of lakhs of answer scripts containing minimum 16 pages each is an expensive affair, Sarma said.
Digital evaluation has several advantages. Once answer scripts are digitized, these will no longer be vulnerable to fires or misplacement. Evaluation will become foolproof and the scripts can be digitally preserved for future reference. Apart from keeping answer scripts secure, the digital evaluation process is also expected to be less time-consuming and ensure error free evaluation. Such evaluation was a major initiative in SEBA’s history. Each and every page of General Mathematics answer scripts of all HSLC/AHM examinees this year were preserved digitally and evaluation was done via computer on the scanned scripts.
Meanwhile, the evaluation process of the HSLC/AHM Exams, 2018 began on Friday. The SEBA has engaged 13,000 evaluators to digitally examine the General Mathematics papers in 11 zones and other subjects (manually) in 34 zones. The evaluation process will be completed in 15 days and results will be announced in May.
Altogether 3,44,190 students appeared for the HSLC exam. In Assam High Madrassa examitions 9,343 students appeared.
The SEBA this year has also reduced interl assessment marks in English, mathematics and general science subjects from 20 to 10 and introduced interl assessment marks in Advanced Mathematics.
