|
Calcutta, March 2: The Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) will conduct an inquiry into the lapses of the Lucknow school that mistakenly opened a packet containing English Paper II questions instead of Paper I yesterday.
The English Paper II, which was to be held on March 4, has been deferred to March 16.
“A full-fledged inquiry will soon be conducted by the council to find out how a packet containing the wrong questions were opened at the Lucknow school,” said Gerry Arathoon, the chief executive and secretary of the CISCE.
The inquiry will not be confined to the erring institution — St Dominic School. The council will also find out if the schools hosting the ISC and ICSE examinations in other parts of the country have appointed adequately qualified and competent persons for doing exam-related duties.
A preliminary investigation by the council has revealed that many schools have appointed teachers of non-academic subjects such as games and music to perform exam duties. Teachers of primary classes are also being used for this purpose in violation of council directives, the probe has found.
“We instruct schools every year that those they engage to collect ISC and ICSE questions from the banks must be teachers who teach the respective courses,” a council source said.
Before distributing ISC and ICSE question papers to examinees, the packets are checked thrice between collection from the bank lockers to unsealing them in the exam halls.
“The multiple checks are done to ensure that even if one person makes a mistake at one stage, it gets rectified in the others. It appears that the mistakes are not getting checked because the schools are engaging inexperienced hands at all three stages. We need to stop this practice,” the source said.
There was confusion among ISC examinees in a reputable Calcutta school during one of the examinations this year when they found that they were given ICSE answer scripts.
A preliminary inquiry revealed that the person the school had asked to manage exam stationery was a games instructor.
“The schools will have to abide by the council instructions concerning selection of persons for doing exam duties considering the inconvenience that is caused because of one or two inefficient persons,” the council source said.
|
