How a weekly test is set, marked and analysed

Every student at Sopana takes a test every Sunday. Parents see the marks by SMS within the week, but there is a lot of work behind that number. Here is what happens to a single test.

On Monday, the subject teacher for each batch writes the paper. It covers the topics taught in the past two weeks, plus a few questions from earlier chapters, so old topics are not forgotten. Each paper has easy, medium and hard questions in a fixed ratio, and our senior teachers check every question for errors and ambiguity on Wednesday. Papers are printed on Saturday and kept sealed until the test.

On Sunday, students take the test in our hall under exam conditions: three hours, no phones, OMR sheets for multiple-choice questions and written answers for the board-style section. The OMR sheets are scanned that evening. The written answers are corrected by the teachers themselves, not by assistants, by Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday, every student receives an analysis sheet: marks by subject and chapter, time taken per section, questions attempted and accuracy, and how their score compares with their previous four tests. Teachers mark the three topics each student should work on that week. On Thursday, the class goes through the paper together, and the doubt desk stays busy with follow-up questions. By Friday, parents receive the marks by SMS. The analysis is what makes the test useful; marks alone tell a student very little.