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Business Standard

Come up with uniform policy on normalisation of marks: NSC chief Karandikar

In a move that may benefit millions of students appearing for various recruitment and entrance examinations across the country, National Statistical Commission (NSC) chairman Rajeeva Laxman Karandikar has urged the government to come up with a uniform policy for the normalisation of marks and negative marking. 'A comprehensive effort should be made to create one group... which will bring all stakeholders on board, give thought to this [problem] and come up with one policy [on normalisation]. This is strictly a statistical issue and should be addressed appropriately,' said Karandikar while speaking at the 19th National Statistics Day on Sunday. Normalisation of marks is a statistical process used to adjust scores in exams conducted in multiple shifts or sessions, where different question papers may have varying difficulty levels. The process aims to ensure a level playing field for all candidates by accounting for these variations in difficulty, so that students are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by the specific paper they received. 'Millions of candidates appear for exams. It is not possible to conduct such examinations at one place in one sitting in the traditional way. Hence, computer-based exams become the norm and these often stretch over multiple days and sessions. This means different question papers for different students. So, the question arises as to how we should compare it. Somehow, each agency goes on its own and declares its own formula, which is different. This leads to dissatisfaction among people who don't make it, leading to litigation. This has been going on for [many years],' added Karandikar. In December last year, thousands of students had come out in protest against the anticipated normalisation process in the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) exam. Earlier, in August, students had also staged protests in the wake of the normalisation process used to announce the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) results. Highlighting the current malaise where the normalisation process often leads to litigation from disgruntled candidates, Karandikar told Business Standard that devising a 'good' formula is important as students cannot be engaged in incessant litigation. 'Sometimes, it has been observed that the selected candidates belong to those appearing in one or two particular shifts and days, while some sessions remain highly under-represented. Hence, coming up with a uniform formula is important at least for central government-conducted examinations,' he added. Besides, Karandikar also proposed the User Verifiable Digital Audit Trail (UVDAT) mechanism to validate votes for online corporate voting and recommended the formation of a dedicated panel to address this issue. Also speaking at the event, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) secretary Saurabh Garg said that by the end of this year, the ministry will begin releasing quarterly data on the informal economy, based on its Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE). 'The ministry has also reduced the timeline for releasing reports to 45 days now, which was earlier anywhere between 8–9 months,' added Garg.