Examination Reforms in ICSE and ISC 2010

The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), New Delhi, has introduced reforms in the examination system, including e-registration and centralised marking of scripts at both ICSE and ISC levels.

Gerry Arathoon, Additional Secretary and Officiating Chief Executive and Secretary of CISCE, said that to make evaluation more transparent, error-free and secure and expedite results, it has been decided to centralise the marking of answer scripts for the ISC and ICSE 2010 examinations. The list of schools where the centralised marking will take place is being finalised.

Examiners’ selection

The release said that it is mandatory for schools to nominate at least one teacher for each subject (both at the ISC and ICSE level) as examiners for the March 2010 examinations.

The teachers that the schools nominate should have had a minimum of three years of teaching experience in the subject at the ISC / ICSE level. The final selection of examiners will be made by the council in October/November 2009.

The council has advised schools to grant duty leave to teachers selected for valuation. These teachers will be required to carry out their responsibilities at the centralised marking centres in their respective cities from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for a period of 10 to 15 days to mark scripts.

e-registration

The release added that e-registration is part of the Council Modernisation Programme that enables schools to electronically register students for the 2011 ICSE/ISC examinations.

The system decentralises authority to the school to enable editing of data till the registration system closes. The e-registration system will be activated on August 20 and will close on September 15.

“This system is designed to reduce errors and time taken through a manual system. It is based on the fact that critical information of students is already available in some spreadsheet format in the school which needs to be copy-pasted into a council template and uploaded into the CISCE database. In addition, data available with CISCE has been migrated into the system so that schools do not have to re-enter data already provided.”

The e-registration system will be deployed in five non-sequential steps. Detailed instructions and help to enable e-registration will be on the council portal through a specific / unique school administration user access.

In case of any difficulty in the process, schools can avail of a special helpline instituted for this purpose, the release added.

Source : The Hindu