Unfairer than Exam

Exams are already unfair enough in measuring the worth of a child and this big wide world couldn’t yet find a wiser way. Now imagine teachers committing mistakes in either correcting answers or in calculating marks. This is not an assumption, it happens often because one teacher has to deal with at least hundred papers within a given time frame. We have realized we are capable of so many errors during the so many midterm exams, when we return the answer scripts to the children. They come to us and show how we have wronged their right answers, or didn’t correct one whole page or forgot to count 10 marks, etc. But it’s not late, we do rectify our mistakes and do the required changes in their marks before we finally submit their marks to their class teacher for making result. But what about during the annual exams? Won’t we make mistakes anymore? Mistakes happen unintentionally but is it fair to let students pay for our mistakes? Our school has adopted a ‘paper giving’ day after annual exam two years ago. We call back our students on 10th December to return their answer scripts so that they can crosscheck if we have overlooked anything at all. And yesterday we followed our annual culture. Some students didn’t turn up, perhaps they don’t yet know that their teacher could make mistakes. I am very happy to admit that the ‘paper giving’ culture made a huge difference this year which made me write this post. There are many forgivable errors in counting, obvious as always but in one subject 25 questions of 2 marks each were marked for just 1 mark each and in another subject due to a mistake in model answer the whole class’s paper needed re-correction. I am proudly admitting mistakes in my school because we have left room for correction, and we have made corrections. What would have happened to so many students if we had followed the traditional culture? What must be happening to so many students across the country where there is no paper giving day? Does your school have it? Please look into it if you don’t have because we can make mistakes, and students should not pay for our mistakes.

by Passang Passu Tshering

The writer is a teacher with the Bajothang Higher Secondary School in Wangdiphodrang

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6 comments

  1. I really appreciate this honest gesture. For all I know most schools and teachers get too defensive even when a mistake is pointed out & forget to recognize that admitting mistakes and making amends is an important example they could model as part of children’s education.

  2. Though the hard and extra work that our beloved teachers have to go through, heartfelt appreciation to them who are cultivating this habit and a remind for the others to follow this to make the students/trainees get what they deserve.
    Not the old school style how we had!

  3. Really appreciate your article. Back in our days we did not have such system in our school and for this i feel i have suffered as well in board exam.  Today, though there is re-evaluation of your paper if you apply for re-test but that is merely a joke. Infact not a single paper has been corrected and updated with new marks. Whoever has applied for re-check received no change in their marks. So there is full of genuine doubts about this re-check work. It is waste of your money and the expectation. So i feel there has to be a transparent means of re-check whereby students can join the re-checking team of teachers to make sure that the marks they have obtained is fair enough. After all it is the question of a students whole life. Regards!

  4. this is a good step but i found some teachers have ego for accepting any suggestions from others.

  5. Almost all the schools in Thimphu and many urban schools do practice this culture for many years…and now a days we have professional teachers who accepts, if they have made mistake…

  6. I really appreaciated your artical

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