New Delhi: Amid concerns raised by students over alleged errors in Class 12 answer sheet evaluation, the Ministry of Education on Sunday clarified that the CBSE’s digital On-Screen Marking (OSM) system leaves little scope for mistakes in checking or totalling marks.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, School Education and Literacy Secretary Sanjay Kumar said the OSM system, used for evaluating this year’s Class 12 board exams, was not new and had first been introduced by CBSE in 2014. However, due to technical limitations at the time, it could not be continued.
He said answer sheets of nearly 98 lakh students were scanned and converted into PDF copies for digital evaluation under a three-level security system. According to Kumar, the process has helped eliminate errors in totalling marks, while teachers were specially trained for the new system.
The clarification comes after some students expressed dissatisfaction with their marks and pointed to a fall in the overall pass percentage. The Class 12 pass rate dropped from 88 per cent last year to 85 per cent this year.
Kumar said some students believed they deserved higher marks, but stressed that special care had been taken to ensure accurate evaluation through digital marking.
He also revealed that around 13,000 answer sheets could not be clearly scanned because students had used very light-coloured ink. These answer sheets were separated and evaluated manually by teachers, after which the marks were uploaded into the system. (ANI)
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