Commissioner of School Education Sigy Thomas Vaidhyan said on Monday that the public examinations to be conducted for classes V and VIII from this year were mainly to have a uniform and fair assessment of learning outcomes of students.

In a statement appealing to parents not to panic, she said that the 40 marks for formative assessment of students will continue to happen at the school level, and only the remaining 60 marks of summative assessment will be done through a common question paper. She said that conducting public examinations for summative assessments by the Directorate of Government Examinations (DGE) was to improve the quality of question papers and to bring uniformity and fairness in assessing the learning outcomes of students.

Ms. Vaidhyan said that while question papers will be set at the State-level, the evaluation of answer sheets will happen at the level of Cluster Resource Centres (CRC) within each district. “The answer sheets will be exchanged between schools within the CRC and evaluated marksheets will be sent to respective schools,” she said.

Since 2012-13, Tamil Nadu has been following the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation method for students from Class I to Class VIII. This includes 40 marks of formative assessment and 60 marks of summative assessment. While formative assessment is done based on experiments, creating models and unit tests, summative assessment is done through exams conducted at the school, block, or district level.

The statement comes in the backdrop of intensified opposition against conducting of public examinations for Class V and Class VIII.

Ms. Vaidhyan reiterated the State government’s decision to not detain any students even if they fail for the first three years after the introduction of public examinations.