
Guwahati, April 7: The Assam State Lower Primary School Association today questioned the effectiveness of Gunotsav since there was no secrecy maintained while distributing question papers.
The association also questioned the evaluation of the schools by politicians and senior government officials without providing them training.
It said the evaluation exercise was carried out using the same question papers distributed on April 5.
"There is no value of the evaluation because students already knew the contents of the question paper," the association's secretary, Ratul Chandra Goswami, said here today.
"The language question paper for scholastic evaluation is same from classes V to VIII. The mathematics question paper for classes V and VI are also same. How can the same question paper evaluate students of different classes? Many questions were also out of syllabus," he said.
Goswami also alleged that no rules and regulations were followed by the external evaluators though a book on evaluation was published by the elementary education department. "External evaluators are mainly politicians and high-ranked officials from different departments. So they need to be trained properly before evaluating a school since many have no link with the education system. In many cases, they carried out the assessment in their own way which ultimately failed the purpose of Gunotsav," he said.
"Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal declared his government will confer an award to the school which will get A grade during the evaluation based on performance in education and infrastructure. There are many schools where education quality is good despite poor infrastructure. Hence, these schools will be deprived from getting A grade. Education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma declared that after the assessment exercise, some schools will be developed and some will be closed down on the basis of the performance. We support the move to develop the schools. But we cannot accept closure of any school and will launch a protest," Goswami said.
The association today submitted a memorandum to the mission director of Axom Sarba Siksha Abhijan demanding immediate steps to address the issues.
Sonowal today visited Phanindra Higher Secondary School at Lakhimpur in Upper Assam as an external evaluator. He was accompanied by PWD minister Parimal Suklabaidya, MLAs Utpal Dutta and Utpal Bora. Sonowal inspected several classrooms and interacted with the students and teachers.
PCC spokesperson Apurba Kumar Bhattacharya in a statement termed the exercise meaningless as many schools are deprived of textbooks and proper infrastructure.