Govt, govt-aided schools in a fix over class 9 exams on OMR sheets
IN THESE QUESTION PAPERS, QUESTIONS RELATED TO HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS WILL ALSO BE INCLUDED.
PRAYAGRAJ : Principals of government and government-aided secondary schools affiliated to UP Board are in a fix over the board’s decision to conduct half yearly and annual exams of Class 9 partly on optical mark recognition (also called optical mark reading or OMR) sheets.
Reason: In accordance with the government order, they are now needed to get the question papers printed, procure answersheets for descriptive questions and OMR sheets all within Rs 25 that they are allowed to collect from students as exam fee.
In such a situation, the principals have already expressed their inability to conduct the examination partly on the OMR sheets to UP Board. State president, Principals’ Council, Brajesh Sharma said though the principals welcome the new system but for implementing it the state government should also provide a specific budget.
“Already, the expenses of all online works are being borne by the institutions and it is not possible to incur extra expenditure of OMR sheets also by them,” he claimed.
Under the new National Education Policy (NEP)-2020, the UP Board has made it mandatory to conduct a part of half yearly and annual examination of class 9 on OMR sheets from this academic session.
This has been done so that the students can be prepared for future competitive examinations. Under this new system, now the class 9 question paper of 70 marks for the written examination has been divided into two parts: The first part of the question paper will have multiple-choice questions of 20 marks which students will have to answer on the OMR sheet while the second part will have descriptive questions of 50 marks which students will have to answer on conventional answer sheets.
In these question papers, questions related to higher-order thinking skills will also be included. UP Board secretary Divyakant Shukla has already sent instructions in this regard to all the district inspectors of schools on November 2.
According to the annual calendar released by the UP Board on August 14, the half-yearly examinations are to be held in November and the annual examinations are to be held in February 2022. Though UP Board officials are reluctant to comment on the issue as any decision with regard to a budget for government-aided schools in this regard can be taken by the state government only.
A delegation of principals of government-aided institutions did meet UP Board secretary on November 9 in this very regard, shared Murarji Tripathi, principal of Sarvarya Inter College, Bahadurganj, who was part of the delegation “The UP Board secretary informed us that the sample of OMR sheet to be used in class 9 examinations from this session has been uploaded on the board’s official website. He made clear that for this no provision has been made by the government for charging of any additional fee,” Tripathi said.