The state education department will be assessing the answer sheets of Saksham — the statewide competency exam — through data analysis to detect cheating patterns in the exam, which end today.
The exam is held at different intervals throughout the year and tests the grade-level competency of students in government schools. In the last round of the exam that took place in September 2019, Kharkhoda block in Sonepat was disqualified due to cheating. For the current round of examinations, the education department will be disqualifying blocks and districts based on the reports of digital analysis, in addition to “naming and shaming” the schools.
Ritu Chowdhary, district project coordinator, Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, an overarching programme for school education extending from preschool to class 12, said that the department is making various interventions to stop cheating.
“A third-party assessment firm is responsible for both creation of the Saksham exam papers and assessment of the answer sheets. They have come up with a new plagiarism checker software, which will detect patterns of cheating. Such blocks will be disqualified,” said Chowdhary.
A disqualification mechanism for any deviations in the answers and an algorithm that uses pattern-check to check the inputs will be used for screening the answer sheets. “Students of classes 3 and 4 are required to mark the answers on the sheet, while students of other classes are asked to fill up the OMR sheets. There is a writing component for all papers, for students in classes 5-8. Similarity, in writing, texts can be detected through the available software,” said Chowdhary.
{{/usCountry}}A disqualification mechanism for any deviations in the answers and an algorithm that uses pattern-check to check the inputs will be used for screening the answer sheets. “Students of classes 3 and 4 are required to mark the answers on the sheet, while students of other classes are asked to fill up the OMR sheets. There is a writing component for all papers, for students in classes 5-8. Similarity, in writing, texts can be detected through the available software,” said Chowdhary.
{{/usCountry}}For Friday’s exam, 295 field investigators and 38 observers were deployed across various schools. Two helpline numbers will also be in operation till Saturday for reporting cheating violations.
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