Tough to rule out cheating in mid-term online exams

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, October 8

A science teacher of a local private school was checking the papers of Class VII students for mid-term examination and was completely baffled with the performance of her students. While only a handful of students used to score anything between 38 and 40 out of 40 on an average during regular school, this time almost everyone fell in this range.

The teacher discussed the unexpected performance of students with his fellow colleagues and found that a similar trend was prevalent for other classes and in other subjects, too!

While some below average students had secured full marks, those who had a record of high score trailed behind them by 2 to 3 marks. This trend can surely be disturbing for any teacher, but almost all of them have now adjusted to such fluctuations and trends during pandemic crisis and online tests. 

Jatinder Singh, Principal, MGN Public School, Urban Estate says: “We have completed the examination and shared the result of Board classes with parents already. We took several measures such as giving the students a limited time to attempt the subjective paper and send scanned copies of sheets to their respective teachers. Of course, many below-average students have indulged in cheating though most toppers seemed to have taken the examination genuinely. But since they are taking examination from home, we cannot rule out cheating.”

He said: “I am also of the opinion that our online teaching concept has gone fairly well and children have managed to save a lot of time for studies that was earlier lost in commuting and getting ready for school. Even that is helping many students to perform better.”

Principal of Police DAV Public School Rashmi Vij said: “We have taken two unit tests of students on Google form and the overall result of all students has been very good. Prior to the examination, I sent a recorded message to all parents telling them to teach honesty to children and not let them cheat at home. We expect at least a majority of them to be truthful, though some would have surely indulged in unfair means.”

Having conducted the JEE as the nodal officer of CBSE in Jalandhar, Vij said: “The experience has helped me gain confidence in conducting offline examination even during the pandemic. We can try that out at least for the Board classes sometime soon after doing proper sanitisation and following government SOPs.”

Asked about the response of parents of Classes IX to XII on giving consent to children to go to campus for clearing doubts with teachers, both principals said only 30 per cent of the parents had filled up the online consent forms sent to them. Vij said: “We have held a session and teachers told me that on an average, 25 per cent students from each class turned up.”

Even a college teacher confided: “The final year examination that have been conducted on the UGC recommendations have been a total farce. Some students created a parallel examination of their own. They all sat together at a student’s place, shared their exam sheets and answers and did it like an open book test. I know this since they called me from this place and asked me an answer to a question, which nobody could find.”

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