Examiner shortage: ICSE schools get council’s ‘warning’

KOLKATA: Stung by the shortage of examiners, the Council of Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) has made it mandatory for schools to nominate teachers for the purpose of evaluating ICSE and ISC answer scripts from 2019 onwards.

The council has warned that schools failing to comply will not be able to confirm the candidature of their students appearing for the board examinations from 2019.

Upset with the reluctance of teachers and schools dragging their feet over sending the requisite number of examiners, the council had earlier sent a circular to affiliated institutes intimating that any school which fails to send the required number of examiners will lose the opportunity to be home centres.

“At present the process of nomination of examiners is based on a voluntary model, wherein the head of the school submits application for nomination of teacher(s) as examiners, which is approved by the Council and the pool of evaluating examiners is identified for each subject and assigned to centralized evaluation centres for a given subject,” reads the circular sent to the schools by Gerry Arathoon, the CISCE chief executive and secretary.

“We have been instructed that from the year 2019, it has been decided to change the process, the staff details of the affiliation module submitted by the schools as a part of periodic update of the teacher’s data shall be used by the office of the Council to identify suitable teachers for nomination as examiners,” said Sujoy Biswas, principal of Rammohan Mission School.

The process of updating the details of the teachers will have to be done on a regular basis, as and when there is a change in the staff information. “The council has informed us that the update must definitely be completed by the schools before starting the confirmation of entries of candidates for the forthcoming ICSE and ISC examinations. On an average each examiner has to correct 180-220 answer scripts,” added Biswas.

The council had earlier instructed schools to compulsorily nominate the required number of examiners which many schools refused. “The shortage of examiners on several occasions prompted the council to take the matter up with concern this year,” said a principal, adding, “Schools which had diligently nominated examiners felt pressurized.”

With the CISCE’s decision, schools will have to take note of the qualifications of teachers who would meet the requisite criteria to be examiners. Several schools appoint under-qualified teachers with less pay.

“Major problem occurs when examiners refuse to turn up and delay the publishing of results. The teachers who agree to do the job are often saddled with huge numbers of answer scripts in the absence of others,” another principal said.

Till now, each school enters the number of nominees and their qualifications on a portal set up by the council from which it selects the examiners. Also, schools which nominated examiners were often sent requests from the latter seeking release from the duty, which many claimed, were forcefully imposed on them.

“This is a welcome move as several schools refused to let go their teachers as examiners citing inadequate faculty in their own school. Now, with penal measures being introduced, the schools will hopefully have no option but to send names,” said a source in an affiliated school.

“Some subjects like English Literature and English Language, Mathematics and some science subjects face examiner crunch. There is sufficient number of teachers in other subjects. However, it looks like the schools have a scarcity of subject teachers only in the above mentioned ones which make schools reluctant to send examiners,” pointed out a teacher of south Kolkata school.

The schools also have to inform Council also about those teachers who have left the school. After completion of filling in the details of all teachers, schools have to check mark the declaration box and submit the form to the Council.