Report cards rankle teachers in Karnataka

From now on, it won’t be just the students battling nerves as they await their exam results. In Karnataka, their teachers, too, will get a taste of the same medicine, as the government is all set to send out report cards that grade teachers on their performance. The State’s department of primary and secondary education has already prepared personalized report cards for teachers in government and aided schools based on the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) results, announced in May 2018. These will be distributed to the teachers in the coming days. The report card will be based on the subject taught and how the class fared in it in the board exams. Teachers have been scored on a scale of zero to 10, with ten being the highest, and categorised in one of four slots: very good, good, average and below average. The evaluation also takes into account the number of students the teacher taught that academic year, the pass percentage, and the average marks of the class. “The purpose of distributing these letters is to provide a feedback mechanism to teachers on how their students have performed,” said P.C. Jaffer, Commissioner for Public Instruction. He added that those whose students have done exceedingly well have been asked to share their “good practices” with the department so that they can be emulated by others. The personalized reports also offer suggestions on how teachers can improve their performance. Those who don’t get a good rating have been asked to put in more effort. V. Sumangala, Director of Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board said that these reports will be distributed to 60,000 teachers in government and aided schools. They have been signed by senior officials of the department and a few have been signed by the Chief Minister. “We hope that teachers will get motivated to prepare their students more rigorously for the 2019 SSLC examination,” she said. Manjunath H.K., president of the Karnataka State High School Assistant Masters’ Association, said it was unfair to rate a teacher based on the performance of the students. Source: The Hindu