ICSE and ISC make changes in its evaluation system

Authorities claimed that the examination and evaluation process of the Indian School Certificate and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education will go online making it transparent aimed at reducing the time gap between the exams and the results.

"We plan using IT in a way yet to be used by any Indian education board. It will make our exam system transparent and accurate and save us a lot of time and energy," said Gerry Arathoon, chief executive officer and secretary of Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE).

The process of allotting an index number to the registered students of classes 10 and 12 is being removed as it is suspected that through this number the identity of the student or the school can be revealed. Instead every student will get a 7 digit number which is color the identity of the student. This id can be used by him to issue duplicate marksheet and for other purposes for the rest of his life.

Students will be getting an answer sheet which has a bar code and students will have to write their id on the first page which has the code and is detachable. On the next page is an OMR sheet on which the teachers will give their marks. It also has the same bar code as on the first sheet.

The first page will be retained by the council and only the bar code will reach the teachers. Orion Indian Systems Pvt. Ltd. will help ICSE to carry this out smoothly.

The answer sheets after the exam will go to the central office of ICSE in Delhi from over 2500 centres where the Orion systems will barcode the envelopes of the answer scripts.

It will have information of which, over 600 centres, will get which set of answer sheets and the information on which rack and room of the council office it will be stored before the dispatch. Each centre will also have a scanner where the teachers will have to stay back and check the answer sheets.

"All the teachers need to do is after evaluation, scan the OMR sheet as well as the bar code of the answer booklet and upload it to the system of the council through the internet. In that way not only the council will get the marks instantly but also monitor the evaluators' performance on a daily basis," said Narendra Kumar, director of Orion India Systems Pvt Ltd.

All information will be stored on a Microsoft data cloud. The ICSE exam this year starts on March 3 and concludes on March 29. More than 150,000 students would be taking the exam. Another 70,000 students from all over the country would be taking the ISC exam that will be held between February 10 and April 7.