SOURCE :- SIASAT NEWS
New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) appears to have disregarded its own governing body’s recommendation to run regional pilot projects before deploying the new on-screen marking (OSM) system for Class 12 board examinations this year, according to minutes of a meeting reviewed by the Hindustan Times.
The governing body had, in June 2025, suggested OSM “may be implemented in all subjects only after completion of pilot projects in some subjects across various regional offices of the board.” CBSE has 22 regional offices. No such pilots were conducted.
Instead, the board ran a two-day dry run in January involving 100 teachers at five Delhi schools. Teachers who participated told HT they had advised CBSE against proceeding, citing inadequate features, insufficient training and the need for more time to adapt.
CBSE began live evaluation under OSM from March 7.
Scanning failures, mark errors
The rollout has since drawn sharp criticism. Evaluators say OSM introduced an unfamiliar workflow, produced poor-quality scans of answer scripts and recorded marks incorrectly. Parents have alleged that answer sheets were mixed up.
Officials at a press conference on May 17 acknowledged early technical problems, including login failures, server overloads and scanning deficiencies. Of 9,866,622 answer books evaluated this year, 68,018 had to be rescanned due to poor image quality. Another 13,583 were checked manually after repeated scanning failed to yield legible copies.
“In manual checking, you can flip pages, revisit answers and catch missed steps. On screen, answers can be overlooked easily,” a physics teacher involved in the evaluation told HT.
A mathematics teacher said fatigue from hours of screen-based work affected step-marking accuracy. “Some evaluators were still figuring out the software while checking live answer books,” the teacher said.
Speed over accuracy, say teachers
A private school principal said teachers were under pressure from the board to complete checking quickly so results could be declared on time. “Teachers had daily targets. Speed mattered more than careful reading,” the principal told HT.
CBSE formally announced the OSM rollout on February 9, just a week before Class 12 examinations began on February 17. The board subsequently held demonstrations, webinars and a mock evaluation exercise. A nationwide webinar was conducted on February 13 and a training portal was opened on February 15.
Officials said nearly 300,000 teachers logged in for training, while around 77,000 eventually participated in evaluation.
Teachers in the January dry run told HT they had recommended at least a year or two of structured training before any live rollout.
Applications surge after pass rate dips
Student anxiety over evaluation quality has been reflected in post-result figures. As of May 26, CBSE had received 404,319 applications seeking scanned copies of 1,131,961 Class 12 answer books. This was a jump of over 208 per cent in applications and 301 per cent in answer-book requests compared to the previous year.
The board attributed the surge to a fee cut announced on May 17, which reduced the cost of a scanned copy from Rs 700 to Rs 100 per subject. However, students, parents and principals told HT that the spike also reflected concerns over evaluation quality after the overall Class 12 pass percentage fell 3.19 percentage points to 85.20 per cent, which was the lowest since 2019.
In one case reported, a student alleged that the physics answer sheet uploaded under his roll number belonged to someone else. CBSE admitted the error and later provided the correct sheet, saying such cases were rare and that two such complaints had been resolved this year.
Despite the controversy, officials said OSM would continue for next year’s board examinations. CBSE’s portal for verification of marks and re-evaluation is scheduled to open on May 29.
SOURCE : SIASAT
