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I was talking about our exam system in the good old days.
When I appeared for my Final MSc exam at the Andhra University at Vizagh in 1963, we came to know that our own teachers had no say at all in our marks. All the question papers were set by anonymous external examiners (mostly from Calcutta or Benares). The scripts were sent to them and they evaluated them and returned them with the marks they awarded in their wisdom. Even for our lab exams, there was a Guest Chief Examiner we never saw earlier.
And we were scared stiff.
And then I became an Associate Lecturer in the Physics Department at IIT KGP in 1965. And learned quickly that the students there had to face a stiff All India JEE to get into IIT. But once they entered IIT, all exams they faced were Internal...if I was allotted a Course, I set the syllabus in practice, I taught the students in my class, I set the question paper, I evaluated the scripts and awarded marks, and there were what were called Teacher's Assessment Marks (TA) too...not even our Director could change a mark once I gave it....there was no system of appeal, no grace marks, no re-evaluation by a senior teacher...no nothing...
I was struck dumb that I was God for once...
Towards the end of my first year there, I was leisurely walking in the corridor of our Department after a cup of tea in the canteen. And our then HoD, HNB, saw me and called me and asked me to run upstairs to the Exam Control Room where I would be given a 'confidential' task for 2 hours.
I ran as ordered and found that a senior gent was sitting on a chair in front of a table on which were stacked 6 or 7 bundles of answer-scripts fresh from the exam conducted the day before. He asked me to take a seat and said I had to do 'false-scripting' all those bundles. I didn't know what false-scripting was and then he pulled out and gave me the dockets on top of each bundle and a sheet on which was written, like:
True Roll Number 25...Assigned False Roll Number 82
at random. And asked me to tear off the bottom half of each script that contained the true roll number and mark the false roll number on it and post it again on the top half of the script so that when the bundle goes to the teacher, he wouldn't be knowing whose script it was and marks the script 'impersonally'.
I did my job, and the last bundle was of my own class of BSc (Hons) which had only 10 students then. I then told the gent, who turned out to be the Professor-in-Charge of Exams, that it is silly to false-script a bundle of ten students whose handwriting I knew like the back of my hand, having taken 3 lectures per week for them for a whole year.
And then he said:
"I know...I know...but it is a Ritual we have to follow...so do it anyhow"
This Ritual was abandoned as meaningless a couple of years after I joined there...happily for all concerned.
Again, I was sitting for a whole year in the Lab as one of two teachers and taking the lab class of those 10 students for the whole year. Those days 30% of the total marks were assigned to their lab khatas which contained reports of their day-to-day work in the lab. And they were allowed to take their lab khatas home everyday.
And then they submitted their lab khatas a day after their final exam for evaluation by me and my senior colleague, Prof HGV, who was an internationally reputed Theoretical Physicist. And we sat down for the job and I asked HGV advice on how to go about marking the 10 bulky lab khatas out of 30. And he smiled and replied:
"I have a system known as the HGV System. You don't have to go through the reports of all the experiments done by all the students throughout the year. Just look at the Roll Number and follow the HGV Equation:
Final Mark = (30 - Roll Number)"
I was stupefied and asked him how this Golden Rule works. And he replied:
"The Roll Numbers of the 10 students are assigned in the order of their merit in their Entrance Exam. And merit doesn't change much in a single year. So, if the Roll Number is 7, give him (30 - 7 = 23). For the topper whose Roll Number is 1, give the mark (30 - 1 = 29). And no questions will be raised"
"But why?"
"These guys are allowed to take their khatas to their Halls. And a day or two before their submission, intense topoing goes on...everyone knows it"
The greatness of the renowned HGV System was that the marks ranged between 20 and 29 out of 30...no failures at all...
Within a couple of years, students were no longer allowed to take their lab khatas home...these were stacked up in the lab. The student enters the lab, picks up his khata, does the experiment, takes readings, jots them down in his khata then and there, and returns his khata back to the shelf in the lab. And picks it up in his next class and repeats the procedure. And so the entire lab report is done in situ in the lab.
This system undermines the HGV Rule and the teacher has to necessarily go through the lab khatas and mark them objectively.
This new system is supposed to be foolproof.
Alas...there is this other Golden Rule:
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
...Posted by Ishani
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I was talking about our exam system in the good old days.
When I appeared for my Final MSc exam at the Andhra University at Vizagh in 1963, we came to know that our own teachers had no say at all in our marks. All the question papers were set by anonymous external examiners (mostly from Calcutta or Benares). The scripts were sent to them and they evaluated them and returned them with the marks they awarded in their wisdom. Even for our lab exams, there was a Guest Chief Examiner we never saw earlier.
And we were scared stiff.
And then I became an Associate Lecturer in the Physics Department at IIT KGP in 1965. And learned quickly that the students there had to face a stiff All India JEE to get into IIT. But once they entered IIT, all exams they faced were Internal...if I was allotted a Course, I set the syllabus in practice, I taught the students in my class, I set the question paper, I evaluated the scripts and awarded marks, and there were what were called Teacher's Assessment Marks (TA) too...not even our Director could change a mark once I gave it....there was no system of appeal, no grace marks, no re-evaluation by a senior teacher...no nothing...
I was struck dumb that I was God for once...
Towards the end of my first year there, I was leisurely walking in the corridor of our Department after a cup of tea in the canteen. And our then HoD, HNB, saw me and called me and asked me to run upstairs to the Exam Control Room where I would be given a 'confidential' task for 2 hours.
I ran as ordered and found that a senior gent was sitting on a chair in front of a table on which were stacked 6 or 7 bundles of answer-scripts fresh from the exam conducted the day before. He asked me to take a seat and said I had to do 'false-scripting' all those bundles. I didn't know what false-scripting was and then he pulled out and gave me the dockets on top of each bundle and a sheet on which was written, like:
True Roll Number 25...Assigned False Roll Number 82
at random. And asked me to tear off the bottom half of each script that contained the true roll number and mark the false roll number on it and post it again on the top half of the script so that when the bundle goes to the teacher, he wouldn't be knowing whose script it was and marks the script 'impersonally'.
I did my job, and the last bundle was of my own class of BSc (Hons) which had only 10 students then. I then told the gent, who turned out to be the Professor-in-Charge of Exams, that it is silly to false-script a bundle of ten students whose handwriting I knew like the back of my hand, having taken 3 lectures per week for them for a whole year.
And then he said:
"I know...I know...but it is a Ritual we have to follow...so do it anyhow"
This Ritual was abandoned as meaningless a couple of years after I joined there...happily for all concerned.
Again, I was sitting for a whole year in the Lab as one of two teachers and taking the lab class of those 10 students for the whole year. Those days 30% of the total marks were assigned to their lab khatas which contained reports of their day-to-day work in the lab. And they were allowed to take their lab khatas home everyday.
And then they submitted their lab khatas a day after their final exam for evaluation by me and my senior colleague, Prof HGV, who was an internationally reputed Theoretical Physicist. And we sat down for the job and I asked HGV advice on how to go about marking the 10 bulky lab khatas out of 30. And he smiled and replied:
"I have a system known as the HGV System. You don't have to go through the reports of all the experiments done by all the students throughout the year. Just look at the Roll Number and follow the HGV Equation:
Final Mark = (30 - Roll Number)"
I was stupefied and asked him how this Golden Rule works. And he replied:
"The Roll Numbers of the 10 students are assigned in the order of their merit in their Entrance Exam. And merit doesn't change much in a single year. So, if the Roll Number is 7, give him (30 - 7 = 23). For the topper whose Roll Number is 1, give the mark (30 - 1 = 29). And no questions will be raised"
"But why?"
"These guys are allowed to take their khatas to their Halls. And a day or two before their submission, intense topoing goes on...everyone knows it"
The greatness of the renowned HGV System was that the marks ranged between 20 and 29 out of 30...no failures at all...
Within a couple of years, students were no longer allowed to take their lab khatas home...these were stacked up in the lab. The student enters the lab, picks up his khata, does the experiment, takes readings, jots them down in his khata then and there, and returns his khata back to the shelf in the lab. And picks it up in his next class and repeats the procedure. And so the entire lab report is done in situ in the lab.
This system undermines the HGV Rule and the teacher has to necessarily go through the lab khatas and mark them objectively.
This new system is supposed to be foolproof.
Alas...there is this other Golden Rule:
"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"
...Posted by Ishani
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