Internal assessment, a bane or boon?

BANGALORE: These students do not get double digit marks in their theory examinations. But they ‘secure' 10 on 10 in their internal assessment.
The Bangalore University stumbled upon a racket where nearly 100 of its affiliated colleges have awarded full marks to students in Internal Assessment (IA).
Following several complaints from students and teachers on irregularities in IA, BU vice-chancellor N Prabhu Dev decided to investigate further.When he picked up colleges' IA marks database randomly, he was shocked to see some colleges had awarded full marks to all students!
"What's the use of introducing IA? The whole purpose is defeated,'' the V-C told TOI.
Prabhu Dev added that when he took over as V-C, he found that many colleges didn't submit IA on time. "When there is no IA, it will be entered as not processed in the computer. There were over 98,000 such not-processed forms. That's when we decided to introduce OMR concept, where they will have to enter IA along with other details. But we found that IA marks were randomly entered. Though the number dropped to 9,000-odd, the discrepancies continued,'' the V-C said.
He said colleges that had indulged in this kind of practice were `not-so-reputed' colleges and a few government colleges too. "This kind of practice will have an impact on the final results. It is worrying. This trend exists for all streams commerce, humanities, science,'' he said.
The BU constituted a sub-committee headed by R M Ranganath, registrar (academics). Other committee members are from different backgrounds academics, principals and teachers' associations. The committee suggested one thing scrap IA. "There's lot of corruption in IA,'' it said.
The BU is now contemplating on introducing Continuous Assessment from this academic year. "In fact, University Grants Commission too has embarked on Continuous Assessment. In this system, assessment will be done on various parameters like how many workshops the student attended, projects he has done, practicals in a laboratory. Only after getting a feedback from everyone, will we decide on introducing it,'' he added.