Evaluation of matric, intermediate exams begin

Ranchi: Evaluation of Jharkhand Academic Council’s (JAC) matriculation and intermediate examination papers began on Thursday after a delay of almost a month in view of the nationwide lockdown. Sources said, roughly 60% of the 10,000 evaluators managed to turn up to check papers on Day-I at the 67 centres across the state. Officials hope the numbers will rise in the coming days.
Due to non-availability of technicians, JAC’s maiden attempt to live stream the process of evaluation to the JAC headquarters in Ranchi also took a hit. No centre, except Ranchi, could manage to set up the required equipment for the process.
Around 3.8 lakh students had appeared for the matriculation examination while 2.8 lakh appeared for the intermediate exams this year, results for which are now expected to be out in the first week of July. Talking to TOI, JAC secretary M K Singh said, “Although the status report from each district on the turnout of evaluators is awaited, overall it looked satisfactory on Day-I.”
Speaking about measures taken keeping in mind the outbreak of Covid-19, Singh said, “At every evaluation centre, proper cleanliness protocols have been followed and everyone was given safety kits like masks, sanitisers, gloves etc to prevent the spread of the virus. There have been absenteeism and we are expecting it to improve in a couple of days. If all goes well, we are eyeing to publish the results on the first week of July.”
In Ranchi, 13 evaluation centres have been set up. Giving an idea of absenteeism on Thursday, director of an evaluation centre at a zila school, Ashutosh Kumar Singh, said, “Out of 32 evaluators for Hindi, eight were absent, for English, nine out of 29 couldn’t turn up, while 20 out of 56 teachers remained absent for evaluation of social sciences papers.”
Rita Kumar, director of Bariatu Girls High school centre said, “Out of 194 teachers, about 160 turned up for checking copies as many complained of unavailability of transport or other issues.”
To curb malpractices during the process, JAC had earlier announced live screening of the entire process from each centre. Singh, however, said that it was only possible in Ranchi on Thursday, but they are trying to make the new system functional across all districts at the earliest.
“We had planned to screen the entire process from each centre live at the JAC headquarters in Ranchi so that we can prevent malpractices. On Thursday, we could live stream only in Ranchi as in other districts our set-up for this process isn’t ready due to lack of installation of equipment, unavailability of technicians and other logistic issues.”