Students sitting for the state board examinations have often worked up a sweat in the past wondering about the mood of the examiner overburdened with hundreds of answer sheets. This time around, they can breathe easy; more examiners and moderators have been roped to ensure that they are not weighed down by their work.
Echoing the fears of several peers, Prabneet Taluja, a Class 10 student of St Louis School, Andheri, said, "The most scary thing about board examinations is that we do not know who will end up correcting our papers. At school, teachers keep reiterating that examiners have to correct hundreds of papers and so, they often check in a hurry. This is worrying because unless we go in for a re-evaluation, we might never know if the teacher made a mistake while checking the paper."
Acting on several complaints from teachers, the board this year decided to take special measures to increase the number of examiners and moderators so that the workload can be shared equally among all. An examiner is likely to get around 150 papers to check. Contrast this with the 250-350 answer sheets they got previously. The severe crunch of examiners and moderators was particularly felt by higher secondary certificate (HSC) authorities.
RR Bhise, secretary, Mumbai division of the state board, said, "The shortage of examiners was felt more during correction of HSC examination papers. We had few teachers for some popular subjects like book-keeping, organisational behaviour and social sciences."
Sarjerao Jadhav, chairman of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, said, "The list of examiners is generally given by the education department but many times, it is not updated. So, it does not give a true picture of the number of teachers qualified to become examiners."
To tackle this, Bhise said, this time, the board called for lists of teachers from every junior college in the Mumbai division, which includes Thane and Raigad. "We identified those teachers experienced enough to become examiners and moderators from every college. We have selected almost an equal number of teachers from every college."
Anil Deshmukh, general secretary of the Mumbai Junior College Teachers Union who had approached the board with members' complaints, said teachers are not keen on becoming examiners as it offers poor remuneration.
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