THE Union government has set the ball rolling to clean the mess in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). It has replaced the board chairman and secretary and ordered an inquiry into the procurement of services for the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. This is a rare admission that something did go wrong on a large scale. It’s worrisome that the digital evaluation system malfunctioned. What’s worse, repeated warnings were ignored — and students ended up paying the price. Initially, the CBSE projected the OSM controversy as a matter of technical glitches, cyberattacks and isolated complaints. However, it has now come to light that the board’s own dry run in January reportedly highlighted serious flaws: marks being altered erroneously, evaluation schemes not matching the software interface, frequent system freezes, unsaved progress and even the possibility of assigning marks to blank answers. Participants allegedly warned that the system required at least a year of further testing before nationwide implementation. Those red flags appear to have been brushed aside.
The adverse consequences were borne not by administrators or vendors, but by students who had appeared in the high-stakes Class-12 exams. Allegations of unchecked answers, blurred scans, mismatched answer sheets and inconsistent evaluation have dented public trust in India’s examination system. When students cannot be certain that the answer sheets being evaluated are their own, the credibility of the entire process comes under a cloud.
The remarkable role played by Sarthak Sidhant, a 17-year-old student who presented his findings before a parliamentary committee, must be commended. He pointed out anomalies in the CBSE’s tendering process for online marking. This is a wake-up call for the beleaguered board. The probe must go beyond procurement procedures to fix responsibility for the premature use of a flawed system.
