The college service commission has followed in the footsteps of the UGC and IITs, deciding to hand over carbon copies of answer scripts to candidates from the next lectureship test in an attempt to make the selection more transparent.
The commission has also decided to go objective from the next test following a prod from the UGC.
“We will give carbon copies of the answer sheets to the candidates from the next State Eligibility Test, scheduled for December,” commission chairman Siddhartha Majumdar told Metro on Tuesday.
“The commission will endorse the decision at its meeting on Wednesday. A formal announcement will be made when a UGC team visits us in August for re-accreditation, a formality before holding an exam.”
The UGC this year introduced the system of handing over carbon copies of answer scripts to the examinees at the National Eligibility Test, held last Sunday. The IITs, too, introduced the system this year at their JEE held on April 8.
In the proposed system, carbon papers will be attached to the OMR (optical mark recorder) answer scripts, on which candidates are required to identify the answer to each question from a set of options.
Explaining the benefit of the proposed system, a commission member said: “Once candidates are allowed to carry carbon copies of answer scripts home, they would be able to find out how they had fared themselves. Besides, if a student later applies under the Right to Information Act to see the original script, they can tally it with the carbon copy and judge whether the evaluation had been fair or not.”
Only objective questions will be set from the next State Eligibility Test.
SET comprises three papers. “The first two contains objective questions. It’s the third that will see a fundamental change,” said Majumdar.
The third paper has so far been consisting of 200 marks, containing questions of 20, 11 and five marks. In the new format, it’s likely to contain 75 questions of two marks each. “The switch to objective questions will result in faster publication of results. But the candidates’ grasp of the subjects can’t be properly assessed in this system. We pleaded for with the UGC for exemption but to no avail,” said Majumdar.