The Education Ministry on Sunday dismissed concerns over the On-Screen Marking (OSM) affecting students’ scores in the CBSE Class 12 exams, saying it’s a system followed internationally to conduct transparent evaluation.
School Education Secretary Sanjay Kumar said to address concerns among students, the CBSE has reduced the cost to obtain a copy of the answer book to Rs 100 from the earlier amount of Rs 700. The cost for verification of marks has been reduced from Rs 500 to Rs 100 per answer book, and the cost for re-evaluation has been reduced from Rs 100 to Rs 25 per question.
If the re-evaluation results in an increase in marks, the amount will be refunded, Kumar said. According to officials, the decision has been taken to ease the anxiety of students. They, however, maintained that the OSM is a foolproof, standardised and transparent marking process.
This year, the CBSE pass percentage has dropped by about three percentage points from 88.39% last year to 85.29%. The number of students scoring 90% and above has also fallen to its lowest since at least 2019. In the on-screen marking system, answer books are scanned and evaluated on computers; the Board introduced this system of marking for the Class 12 exams this year.
Kumar said the CBSE wanted to introduce OSM in 2014 itself, but it didn’t seem feasible with available technology then. “There are several institutions in the world and in the country that do this (OSM)…Mumbai University, Visvesvaraya University…,” he said.
Internationally accepted system
On-screen marking is being used by many institutions internationally as well as at the national level. According to officials, in schools it is used by the International Baccalaureate and Cambridge boards as well. In fact, it has become a norm internationally because through technology, it enables evaluators to conduct the entire system in a more transparent manner, the officials said.
This year, a total of 98 lakh answer books were scanned and PDFs made, ensuring the order of the pages, Kumar said, adding that OSM brought in a flexibility into the evaluation process — earlier, marking was done in the geographical area of CBSE’s regional offices, but with OSM, the papers could be sent outside the vicinity of regional offices, “bringing in more objectivity and transparency”.
He said totaling mistakes can be avoided with OSM as it is a digital process, with a record of marks given for the answers.
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A total of 13,000 answer books were found to be illegible, the ink in some cases were far too light to be fully legible after scanning. These answer sheets were checked manually, said Kumar.
On the drop in pass percentage, the School Education Secretary said: “There is a variation in the pass percentage…in the Covid years, it had spiked. The system is also stabilising. What may have been, I can’t answer with absolute certainty. Now the marking process has become more objective and standardised.”
CBSE Chairman Rahul Singh acknowledged that the on-screen marking system did face glitches when evaluation of major subjects began on March 17.
“When teachers logged in initially, there were glitches… Systems were hanging when they were first operationalised. There were downloading issues, but they were resolved in quick time, and by March 18, the system was working flawlessly…across multiple subjects, evaluations went on simultaneously,” he said.
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Singh said when OSM was attempted in 2014, the scanning infrastructure available was such that answer books could not be scanned without cutting open the books, resulting in answer sheets getting mixed up. “Now we have a technology where the entire answer book can be scanned in one go without cutting it open at the spine…We were also more confident of the availability of digital infrastructure in our schools…The quality of software has gone up, and availability of teachers who are exposed to digital media, either through computers or mobile phones…all things considered, we thought it was a fit time to go for OSM.”
Kumar maintained that there was no change in assessment or in the marking scheme, and the only difference this year was that the answer books were evaluated digitally.
“Boards have always stressed on stepwise evaluation and marking… It is not that step-wise marking has been brought in this year,” Singh said.