Youth Affairs dept to introduce online assessment system

In an attempt to ensure the qualitative improvement of youth, based on the need of the industry at the present time, the state Youth Affairs department is all set to introduce centrally online assessment system for computer trainees in all the Youth Computer Training Centres across the state.

The state Youth Affairs Department runs 1,000 Youth Computer Training Centres (YCTC) in collaboration with different private organisations. The main motive behind running the centres is to provide equal opportunity to the youth from both urban and rural parts to commence computer training and to make them ready to get a job in different fields mainly in the IT sector.

At present 1.20 lakh youth gets trained every year in the YCTCs, many of which had come up in the past five years after the change of government in the state.

According to the sources, in the state Youth Affairs department, the examination will be conducted centrally and online. As a result, all trainees appearing for a particular examination will have to log on to a website and type in their user id and password to get the set of questions. Everyone will get question papers at the same time and date.

They have to key in their answers within the sanctioned time. Since the system of assessment is completely online, there would not be any scope for the time extension.

When asked, an official said if some other candidate appears for examination in place of the genuine candidate, they would easily be identified as there would be a system of digital signature and other security codes. The process of examination will become more transparent with the introduction of the online-based assessment as there are many centres situated far from the headquarters of the districts.

Thus, it was difficult to say whether all parameters were maintained by the management of a particular centre while conducting examinations. However, with the introduction of the new system, the entire process will get controlled and monitored centrally.

The trainees will also get their results and certificates online. They can get their results just by logging into a particular website using their respective user ids and passwords.

It is learnt that the task of conducting the examination centrally and online has been given to Hewlett-Packard (HP). They have developed the software and the entire system for conducting the examination.

If everything goes as planned the project will be inaugurated in the presence of minister Aroop Biswas in September.

Presently, there is hardly any job which is done offline in the IT and ITES industries. Thus, the introduction of the new system of evaluation will make the trainees more competent for the industry. They will be provided with training before they appear for the online examinations.

It may be mentioned that after the change of the guard in the state, the Youth Affairs department had taken steps to set up YCTCs in every nook and corner so that a student does not need to 

travel much to reach his or her training centres.

At present, there are eight centres in Darjeeling, 79 in West Midnapore, 73 in East Midnapore, 45 in Bankura, 22 in Purulia, 91 in South 24-Parganas and 51 in Kolkata.