‘It’s Of No Help, Cripples Intuition Of Students’
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai: 02.02.2019
Intelligent guessing is an art. One cannot be sure about all things at all times. In other words, negative marking does not allow a student to develop an element of guessing, Justice R Mahadevan of the Madras high court said while directing the National Testing Agency to consider doing away with the concept of negative marks in competitive exams.
“By awarding negative marks, the intuition of a student is crippled. Everyone comes across a situation in life where decisions are taken purely out of intuition. It may work or may not, but, an element of boldness comes along, while making a decision through intuition. The threat of negative marks will never allow intuition to grow in a student,” Justice Mahadevan said.
Wild guessing is another type of guessing. While intelligent guessing requires an amount of prior knowledge on the subject, wild guessing is the decision taken just like that.
In a competitive examination, the students come with varied degrees of preparation. As such, when a student is not sure about the answer, he or she attempts intelligent guessing. This type of guessing should be permitted and encouraged, as it would help the students in the future, the court added.
Multiple-choice tests are meant to assess the knowledge and not supposed to be concerned about behavioural/attitude related aspects of the examinee, the judge said. “Therefore, this court is of the considered opinion that the system of negative marking in no way helps the examiner to analyse the intelligence, aptitude or knowledge of the students in any manner. As such, this court has no hesitation to hold that the system of negative marking has to be done away with, inasmuch as, in the considered opinion of this court, the same perforce requires reconsideration.”
Justice Mahadevan passed the order on a plea moved by S Nelson Prabhakar, a JEE (Main) 2013 candidate, seeking revaluation of his exam. Eventually, he was disqualified and was not allowed to appear for JEE (Advance) 2013. The main reason for his low marks was found to be negative marking awarded for every wrong answer.
Submitting that the facts of the present case has brought to light the tyranny of awarding negative marks, advocate A Arulmozhi said, “It is time for a judicious scrutiny of awarding negative marks by agencies which conduct competitive examinations.”
Drawing the attention of the court to the admission process in countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia and Russia, Arulmozhi contended that the most advanced countries do not follow the system of negative marking.
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai: 02.02.2019
Intelligent guessing is an art. One cannot be sure about all things at all times. In other words, negative marking does not allow a student to develop an element of guessing, Justice R Mahadevan of the Madras high court said while directing the National Testing Agency to consider doing away with the concept of negative marks in competitive exams.
“By awarding negative marks, the intuition of a student is crippled. Everyone comes across a situation in life where decisions are taken purely out of intuition. It may work or may not, but, an element of boldness comes along, while making a decision through intuition. The threat of negative marks will never allow intuition to grow in a student,” Justice Mahadevan said.
Wild guessing is another type of guessing. While intelligent guessing requires an amount of prior knowledge on the subject, wild guessing is the decision taken just like that.
In a competitive examination, the students come with varied degrees of preparation. As such, when a student is not sure about the answer, he or she attempts intelligent guessing. This type of guessing should be permitted and encouraged, as it would help the students in the future, the court added.
Multiple-choice tests are meant to assess the knowledge and not supposed to be concerned about behavioural/attitude related aspects of the examinee, the judge said. “Therefore, this court is of the considered opinion that the system of negative marking in no way helps the examiner to analyse the intelligence, aptitude or knowledge of the students in any manner. As such, this court has no hesitation to hold that the system of negative marking has to be done away with, inasmuch as, in the considered opinion of this court, the same perforce requires reconsideration.”
Justice Mahadevan passed the order on a plea moved by S Nelson Prabhakar, a JEE (Main) 2013 candidate, seeking revaluation of his exam. Eventually, he was disqualified and was not allowed to appear for JEE (Advance) 2013. The main reason for his low marks was found to be negative marking awarded for every wrong answer.
Submitting that the facts of the present case has brought to light the tyranny of awarding negative marks, advocate A Arulmozhi said, “It is time for a judicious scrutiny of awarding negative marks by agencies which conduct competitive examinations.”
Drawing the attention of the court to the admission process in countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia and Russia, Arulmozhi contended that the most advanced countries do not follow the system of negative marking.
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