53 Internal Marks and Torture rooms - My experience

Recently, there had been lot of News on internal marks and torture rooms in some self-financing engineering colleges in Kerala. There is a complaint that certain institutions and teachers under instructions have been deliberately trying to victimize students. But, in well-run institutions, government, aided or self-financing colleges, internal marks has been a blessing  to good students  even in our own time, 1963-68.

First of all, let us see why internal assessment is essential in professional colleges. Normally university examinations are held at the end of the semester. It is an accepted fact that it is not possible to assess the capabilities of a student in a professional course only by means of an end semester  or end of the year examination conducted by the university. In professional courses like engineering and medicine, the importance of practical experience cannot be ignored. Almost half of the contact hours of these first degree programmes are used for practical experiments and hands-on training.  Learning through doing is more important than learning through hearing lecturers or by reading books.

Experiments conducted in professional colleges are held under the strict supervision of teachers. Teachers are required to record their observations on how well their students conduct their experiments systematically and with interest on a day to day basis. Along with end semester evaluation, the continuous evaluation throughout the semester is also used for assessment of the performance of the student. In courses like medicine, it is absolutely necessary to learn through careful observations and by face to face interaction with the patients. Proper diagnosis and treatment will be possible only then. Learning by reading books or notes is highly restrictive and will be incomplete in such courses. Laboratory sessions may be evaluated by one or more teachers supervising and the net evaluation will be based on the sum of these individual assessments.  Internal marks secured by a student will thus depend upon this continuous assessment over the length of the semester.

In Calicut university engineering degree courses, for a theory paper the university examinations the maximum marks were 100 whereas internal marks for the theory subjects was 50. These 50 marks were awarded based on the performance in at least two class tests of 15 marks each and at least two assignments each carrying 10 marks. Normally, if one adds his marks secured for class tests and assignments, the total will be the internal assessment marks. Teachers are required to return the answer papers of class tests and assignments after evaluation to the students within a reasonable time after the tests or assignments. If there is any error or grievance in the evaluation, it has to be corrected then and there. At the end of the semester, the internal marks awarded for each subjects are to be displayed on the notice board and students should be given an opportunity to point out clerical errors, if any, in the assessment made. At least 2 or 3 days are to be given to the students to point out the errors. Only after incorporating these corrections, the marks are to be sent to the university. All these has to be done in a transparent way.  

For a theory paper, university examinations can  fetch 100  marks and along with internal marks of 50, total marks will be 150. For a pass,  75 marks  is to be obtained. Further, a minimum of 40 marks is essential for university  examination. This means that even if one gets only 40 marks   for university exam, if he has 35 marks in the internal, he can still get a pass. Since the university question papers are set by  examiners  outside the college, sometimes the questions may not be as expected and the chances  of failure looms large for  just average students. So, the internal marks are definitely helpful. Even for good students trying for first class and distinction, the internal marks will provide a reserve from which they can draw the marks to fill the deficiency to reach 60% or 75%. For students who are regular in the class and study well, it is not difficult to get 80-90% in the internal assessment. When we were studying (five year integrated course) the internal marks every year was only 200 when the university marks for all subjects  together  was 1000. Many of us in the class used to get 180 or even 190 marks for the  internal which means 60-70  marks could be used to make up for  first class or distinction. Even if we get  slightly  less marks for one or two subjects, surplus  from the  internal proved to be quite handy

In our department in REC, once the internal marks are awarded by all staff members, we used to tabulate for each subject, the average marks, maximum marks, minimum marks, number of students getting below 50% and compare across different subjects in the same semester. If the class average given by a particular staff member is too low or the number of students getting marks below 50% is too large, in comparison, the department will ask the staff member why for his subject alone this happens. If he is not able to give a valid reason for the low marks and large number of failures, the staff members were asked to normalise the marks to an acceptable class average. In REC,  for many of us the class average was around 65-70%. Even if the average   is too much above this also, downward normalisation  had to be done. This had to be done irrespective of the seniority of the staff member involved. 

Now, let me share my experience. In TKMCE, we used to get very good internal marks. During the third, fourth and final years, the excess marks proved to be quite handy for me to maintain my distinction all the three years. Even after coming to REC, as a teacher, the class average of the internal marks awarded by me was around 70% and there was no need for scaling up or down. But during the second year of career in REC, it so happened that 7 students in my subject failed to get the minimum internal marks. Since these students were below average, it was certain that they will fail in the subject as it will be difficult for them to get  50%  in the university examinations. I called them personally to my room and told them unless they take another test to improve their test marls, I cannot give them the minimum. I asked them to take an additional class test before the university examination so that if they do well, I can increase the marks. However, only two of them turned up for the makeup test, five did not turn up. I could not help them in spite of my offer of help. They did not get the minimum internal marks. All of them, as expected, failed in the university examination, not once, three or four times. As they had only low internal marks, they had to get 50%  for the university which was  impossible  for them. After a few years after passing out, they changed the centre from Calicut to Palakkad and still could not get a pass in this subject. After the five year course was discontinued and four year  course  was  in full swing, nothing is known about these  students , whether  they have passed  the course and got their engineering degree. Some students are like that, they will   refuse to learn from their mistakes and by the time they realize their mistake, it will be too late.

Why I have written this much on the internal evaluation is to show that the internal assessment is very often helpful to good students who want to complete the course reasonably well. For many good institutions, the evaluation method is transparent and there are enough checks to make sure that a teacher does not victimize a student due to personal vendetta. If there is any attempt by a teacher to victimize, the student can get his grievances redressed by the head of the department or principal. Any administrator will be receptive   to hear the complaint and repair the damage if there is any ground in the complaint. Of course there may be one or two teachers in a college who may try to do mischief to the students, but   this is extremely rare. If any teacher misuses the internal marks to trouble the students deliberately, it cannot be allowed to continue. If some institutional administration is vile enough to allow such things to happen and use torture rooms to harass students, the university or higher administration has to intervene and stop it once for all. Such institutions are bound to be closed sooner or later as parents and students will never seek admission in such institutions.