Exam plan

Calcutta, Sept. 15: Mug up what the teacher has taught over the past six months, get it off your head, forget it.

College and university students in India could soon be doing exactly this, with the Union government deciding to replace the annual Part-I, Part-II and Part-III examinations in undergraduate and postgraduate courses with semesters.

A change in marking patterns is also on the table, University Grants Commission chairman Sukdeo Thorat said after a meeting today with representatives of nearly 40 universities from across the country.

Grades need to replace numerical marking, the system practised in most universities now, Thorat said after the meeting at Jadavpur University.

Thorat said the Centre has decided to introduce the changes before the 11th Five-Year Plan ends in 2012. “Universities will have to do away with the old one-time evaluation system in undergraduate and postgraduate examinations. Instead, they should have semester examinations, which are more scientific. The numerical marks also need to be abolished and grades introduced,” the UGC chairman added.

There is also a proposal to award both marks and grades, a system followed in various Class XII-level board examinations.

Before introducing the changes, the Centre will take the opinion of teachers and authorities of all the universities in the country. The changes will be discussed over five meetings — four regional conferences and the final one in Delhi in October.

Today’s meeting at Jadavpur University was the first of the four regional ones.

Sources in Bengal’s higher education department said the state government has welcomed the proposed changes. But existing infrastructure and the current teacher-student ratio in universities and colleges need to be improved, they added.

The teacher-student ratio now varies between 1:20 and 1:30 in most college and university departments.

“Both the changes — semester examinations and grades — are scientific and have been adopted by most universities in the US and the UK,” said Suranjan Das, pro-vice chancellor of academic affairs at Calcutta University.

“But we need to appoint more teachers for implementing the decisions,” Das, who is also a member of the UGC executive council, added.