Software based IT examinations in Kerala
By James Paul | 09 Mar 2004
Kochi: The General Education Department Government of Kerala is conducting a software-based IT examination for over five lakh ninth standard students in the State for the first time.
IT was made a compulsory subject in Standard VIII and Standard IX in the State from the previous academic year. However, this is for the first time an IT examination is being held in such a massive scale for students of a particular class.
The examination software package contains as many as 600 objective type questions and 130 programme- involved practical questions which can be transformed into around 600 questions. The marks to be allotted for IT examination will be 50 with 20 marks for theory and 30 marks for practicals.
The software, developed after inviting tender from various firms, costs Rs 5 lakh. Though the department invited tenders to develop the examination software both in Windows and Linux platforms, none of the firms which bid for the project were in a position to develop it in Linux platform in the specified period of time. Now the software is on Windows platform.
As many as 2,369 schools out of the total 2610 schools in government, aided and un-aided sectors across the state, have set up lab facilities for imparting computer education to students under the IT@School programme.
According to the guidelines, IT will have the same status as any other mainstream subject at the high school level and marks will be considered for promotion. Every school should conduct terminal and annual examinations on the subject from this academic year onwards.
There are 128 Government schools without a computer lab out of the total 990 government schools.
