Teachers on evaluation duty rue meagre pay, poor facilities

About one lakh teachers across the State are involved in correcting the answer sheets at evaluation centres set up by the Directorate of Examinations. Besides correction, evaluators have to total the marks and enter them in two or three separate sheets, and check for proper barcodes. They also have to segregate the wrongly coded papers.

However, teachers correcting Class 10 papers are paid only Rs 8 per answer sheet without any other remuneration or conveyance. Likewise, teachers who evaluate Class 11 and 12 exam papers are paid between Rs 11 and Rs 13 per answer sheet, depending on the subject. Each teacher would be given a maximum of 30 answer sheets per day for evaluation. The work would last for 4 to 12 days without a break, with each teacher correcting 120 to 360 answer sheets in total. For this work, teachers who evaluate Class 10 papers would be paid between Rs 960 (4 days) and Rs 2,800 (12 days). Similarly, teachers who correct answer sheets for Class 11 and 12 would earn between Rs 1,440 and Rs 4,300. “Though the paper correction starts by 9 am, we should report at the evaluation centre by 8.30 am,” said a teacher, who said many of them have to travel a long distance to reach the far-flung evaluation centres. Another government school teacher, seeking anonymity, complained that they do not even have basic facilities like decent toilets at the centres. An official from the Directorate of Examinations admitted that the pay for the evaluation was last revised three years ago.