Mumbai colleges demand result declaration, against award of ‘average’ marks for lost answer sheets
Hard work of Mumbai University students whose answer sheets are missing will be ‘downgraded’ because marks will be based on an ‘unknown formula,’ say principals
education Updated: Oct 06, 2017 12:03 IST
Colleges affiliated to University of Mumbai have opposed plans to give compensatory marks to students whose answer papers have been misplaced in the chaos in the examination department.
Colleges have written to the university asking for a solution that can end the mental agony of students who are yet to get the results of last semester. As a solution, the university has decided to award marks in the missing answer papers using the average of scores in the other papers.
Colleges, however, are not satisfied with this plan, especially because of the time it is taking. “Not only are they downgrading the hard work of students by basing marks on an unknown ‘formula’, but the fact that five months after their exams thousands of students are still struggling for results is unacceptable,” said Ashok Wadia, principal of Jai Hind College, Churchgate.
Wadia added that there are many students from the commerce section of his college who are still waiting for results. Some students who usually secure high scores but have got low marks are awaiting the re-evaluation of their answer papers. “Instead of procrastinating, the university needs to find a solution and announce pending results at the earliest,” he added.
After initially announcing that answer booklets of over 28,000 students were misplaced because of the on-screen marking (OSM) software, the university has now said that answer papers of just 1,600 students are still missing while another 9,000 papers of students are yet to be assessed. “Assessment work is still going on for those papers and results will be out soon,” the university had said in a statement last week.
The university has introduced online correction of answer papers from this semester but the process has been riddled with delays and goof-ups, including misplacement of answer sheets. The results of many courses have been delayed.
While pending results is one part of the problem, an increasing number of applications for re-evaluation is another concern with over 46,000 applications received by the university this semester. “I had topped my batch in the previous semester but according to the university I have failed in a subject this semester. This is impossible so I have sought for a photocopy of my answer booklet and asked for re-evaluation. I hope this result at least is released soon,” said a student of UPG College in Vile Parle.
