Marks Normalization Caused Controversies In Kerala

The normalization of marks for class XII students of ICSE and CBSE board is leading to controversies in Kerala. Previous Kerala government proposed for normalization of marks to help the state board students in KEAM (Kerala Engineering Architecture Medical) exam as most of the seats were occupied by the ICSE/CBSE students scoring higher marks.

Normalization resulted in many students scoring high marks in board exams to miss upon seat while those did not even clear their class XII got seats in KEAM. Many parents and school authorities protested against it. As per the prospectus of the KEAM CEE (Common Entrance Examination), the proposed normalization method applied same equation comprising of mean and standards deviation that was used in 2011.

Sources from the parents forum revealed that the difference is that the mean and standard deviation for 2012 for the 4 main syllabus in ICSE, CBSE, state and VHSE will be computed for the last 4 years from 2009-12. Sources from ISRO revealed that the standardized committee of the state government failed to address an important deficiency in the equation. In many cases the equation failed to convert a 100% score to 100% itself.

As per the experts, the proposed pattern for KEAM this year will remain same as previous year. A significant change is that this year, Kerala HSE scores will be converted to the common scale and they will also lose marks. Kerala government needs to work out a formula which can convert 100% to 100% itself and not less or more than that.