The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has come under fire for ignoring calls from its governing body members to conduct regional trials before rolling out the new on-screen marking (OSM) system for Class 12 board examinations.
According to minutes of a meeting seen by HT, the board instead conducted a two-day exercise involving only 100 teachers at five Delhi schools in January, who advised CBSE not to proceed with the rollout due to the need for better features, more training, and time to adapt to the system.
However, the system was rolled out on February 9, just a week before Class 12 examinations began, and has since been plagued by technical glitches, including login issues, system overload, and scanning deficiencies.
As a result, 68,018 answer books had to be rescanned due to poor image quality, and 13,583 were checked manually after repeated scanning failed to produce legible copies.
The scale of student concern is reflected in post-result numbers, with CBSE receiving 404,319 applications seeking scanned copies of 1,131,961 Class 12 answer books, a jump of over 208% in applications and 301% in answer-book requests compared with last year.
Students, parents, and principals have expressed anxiety over evaluation quality after the board's overall Class 12 pass percentage fell 3.19 percentage points to 85.20%, the lowest since 2019.
The concerns have not been limited to aggregate pass rates, with one widely discussed case involving a student who alleged that the physics answer sheet uploaded under their roll number did not belong to them.
CBSE has admitted the error and provided the correct sheet, but teachers involved in OSM evaluation have told HT that such cases are likely to occur due to the constraints of screen-based evaluation.
Despite the current controversy, officials have said that OSM will continue for next year's board examinations, but experts have warned that the initiative needs better preparation, including proper scanning, teacher training, and retraining.
