Ban on mobiles a joke at SSLC evaluation

With teachers continuing to take their mobile phones inside evaluation centres, the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board’s (KSEEB) claim of not allowing cellphones has fallen flat.

The evaluators are taking their mobile phones inside the centres as there is no locker facility outside. Yashodha Bhopanna, director, KSEEB, said: “We are not a bank to make such arrangements. Some schools might have safety lockers, some might not. The deputy chief evaluators ought to keep it with them.”

The deputy chief examiner (DEC) is also an evaluator and so has to carry all these mobiles inside the centre. A DEC usually has six evaluators under his/her supervision. Instead of keeping their phones, the DECs ask the teachers to keep their phones on silent mode.

Even before the evaluation process had begun, standing instructions had been given to the chief examiners to ensure that cellphones were not allowed inside evaluation centres and the same was announced even at a press conference.

“There are instructions that we are not permitted to use it. However, no one is checking to see if we carry them inside the hall,” an evaluator told DH.

“We have been asked to put it on silent mode and not use it while the evaluation is going on as it might lead to distraction. Since it might be embarrassing if others get distracted, teachers are asked to put it on silent mode,” said another evaluator.

It maybe recalled that two days ago, pictures of answer scripts of some students who had written a recipe of “biryani” were making rounds on WhatsApp.

However, when asked, KSEEB officials clarified that the answer script was not of the present year and someone kept circulating it for fun.

“We received messages on WhatsApp about some answer script being circulated. We tallied it with the present paper. The questions were what had appeared in the previous year’s papers and hence the script on circulation was found to be an old one,” said Yashodha.

The director also said that she had called for a meeting with 218 chief examiners in two batches and had given them instructions about carrying out the evaluation and restricting the use of mobile phones.

“We do not know under what mindset the child might have written such answers. It is not morally right to circulate such things and hence we had to ban cellphones. It could be a reflection of the child’s dislike to a subject or the sadness and frustration of being unable to perform well,” she added.