Kannur University teachers boycott exam evaluation midway over data privacy concerns, excess work

Kannur: Kannur University's teachers affiliated with the Congress-led United Democratic Front have refused to evaluate the first-semester exam papers of the newly introduced four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP), citing poorly designed data management software, excessive clerical tasks, and unmanageable workload.

In two separate statements, the Government College Teachers' Organisation (GCTO) and Kerala Private College Teachers' Association (KPCTA) said they would not be attending the evaluation camps from Thursday, December 5, till their concerns are addressed. 

Kannur University's affiliated colleges began evaluating first-semester exams on December 2, aiming to complete it by December 9.

Kannur University Vice-Chancellor in-charge Prof KK Saju said he has called for an online meeting of all teachers' unions to resolve the issues at 11 am on Thursday. "We hope to resolve these teething problems through talks and ensure the results are brought out on time," he told Onmanorama.

KPCTA Kannur Regional Committee president Dr Shino P Jose said there would be no compromise on two things: "We will not log into K-REAP (exam data management) software, and evaluating answer sheets of 40 to 50 students per day is not possible".

K-REAP or Kerala Resources for Education Administration and Planning (K-REAP) is the state government's digital project to streamline administrative and academic processes such as assigning courses to students, linking students to their respective courses, digitising internal and external marks and centralised management of these data.

The Education Department's ASAP (Additional Skill Acquisition Programme) won the contract to implement the K-REAP project but outsourced it to Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Ltd (MKCL), which according to these teachers' associations, has a history of data manipulation.

"The government is transferring students' exam data to an external company. It is also planning to collect money from students to pay MKCL's fee," said Dr Jose.

Apart from concerns over data privacy and integrity, teachers said that MKCL's software itself is cumbersome, with teachers taking two hours to enter marks of 40 to 50 students. Earlier, the same work would take only 15 minutes, said GCTO.

Dr Jose said the university used to provide clerks to do this job.

GCTO said the clerical tasks such as course mapping and student mapping, previously managed by university staff, have now been shifted to teachers via the K-REAP system.

KPCTA and GCTO said they were also unhappy with Kannur University mandating the evaluation of 50 sets of answer sheets for 90-minute exams and 40 sheets for two-hour exams in a day. In higher secondary school evaluation, teachers needed to evaluate only 30 answer sheets per day for two-hour exams. 

Kannur University VC Prof Saju said the issues raised by the teachers were operational issues and unfamiliarity with using Microsoft Excel. "These operational difficulties in the initial stage can be resolved through talks," he said.

On data privacy and integrity, Proj Saju said the Higher Education Council had done the due diligence before picking the Maharashtra-based company. "I have shared the letter we got from the council with the teachers. The letter tells teachers that there is no need for such apprehensions," he said.