Teachers allege malpractice in evaluation, threaten to complain to CM

The TN Government College Teachers Association (TNGGTA) is threatening to meet the Higher Education Secretary Sunil Paliwal, Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit, and if necessary, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, if the university does not act to rectify alleged malpractices.

ARevealing this, the association’s zonal secretary, D Vijayan, said, “An unofficial valuation centre operating in the university campus at Serkadu sees nearly 150 papers being valued per day, against the norm of 50 undergraduate and 40 postgraduate papers a day. This will naturally affect the quality of valuation and the future of the students.” Elaborating, he said, “Only four evaluation centres of the eight functioning in the ongoing evaluation have Syndicate approval. Also, all valuation centres should have equal number of working days. But while the Vellore centre functioned for only three days, those at Vaniyambadi, Cuddalore and Villupuram worked for nearly 10 days.”

Adding that they were unaware of the whereabouts of 60 per cent of answer scripts as they are correcting only around 8,000 papers, he said, “A pre-board meeting is usually the norm and is conducted a day before valuation begins.

This is to ensure that there are enough teachers to correct different subject papers. However, this procedure was not followed. The chief evaluators were asked to furnish the number of evaluators available on a paper slip, but we refused to do” he added.

However, Thiruvalluvar University Controller of Exams, B Senthil Kumar, refuted the allegations stating that evaluation work was done properly. He said, “Evaluation is now on at eight Syndicate-approved centres and papers are handed over to them according to need.”

On the pre-board meeting, Senthilkumar said, “Four years ago, pre-boards were conducted on the university campus, but later teachers preferred to do them in the centres itself, as travelling to the university was time-consuming.

Only at the end of the evaluation do we know if the preboard was conducted as it is the local centre chairman who has to do it and submit the minutes of the meeting.”

Stating that he has asked the association members, including Vijayan, to discuss the issue with the VC and the Registrar on Tuesday, he said, “They have agreed to do so.”