BENGALURU: To cut down the cost of printing paper, the Department of School Education and Literacy has introduced a policy to provide question papers online on the exam day for SSLC preparatory exams.
But the decision has evoked mixed reactions from teachers of government and private schools.
This is the first time that the department has uploaded the question paper on a portal that can be accessed only by the respective school headmasters or principals after entering the login details and one-time password (OTP) that is sent to their mobile numbers.
While some teachers appreciated the move to go all digital to reduce expenses, others felt the department should have taken the decision after taking the rural schools also into consideration, as most of them have no access to printers or photocopiers in their schools or neighbourhoods to photocopy the question papers in bulk.
Vasanth, a teacher from the Government High School in RT Nagar, said, “45 students from our school are writing SSLC exams this year. It is a good decision by the department to send the question papers online and let the schools print them. We printed the question papers at our school, but we had to come at 6.30 am because the question paper was uploaded on the portal at 7 am. To print hundreds of copies for 45 students, we need at least two hours. The question papers contain a water mark of code assigned to respective schools.”
Hiremath, a teacher from Jnana Jyothi High School, Dharwad, said, “It is a good initiative as it can cut down the expenses spent on printing the question papers. Otherwise, children in private schools like ours would be burdened with fees for three preparatory exams. The new system also prevents chances of question papers leaking.”
But a teacher from Bannigola Government High School in Vijaynagar district said, “We arrived at our school at 6.30 am to download and print the question papers. Since we don’t have a printer at our school and no photocopier, we had to go to the town to print the papers and reach school before 9 am to give them to students. The department should have considered rural schools like ours and provided us with hard copies of question papers.”
Another school teacher from Hagaribommanahalli Government High School said, “It is a big task for teachers and we need to print these question papers with the help of outside printing shops. Later, we have to delete it from their system so that it is not leaked or shared with students. We need to repeat this exercise of heading to print and photocopier shops till February-end.”
More than seven lakh students have written preparatory exams across the state that started on Monday.
The story is reported by Rashmi Patil of The New Indian Express
