'Eliminated totalling error': Education Ministry defends On-Screen Marking amid Class 12 result row

Ministry of education on Sunday said the digital marking process was not new for the CBSE, amid students expressing concern over error in checking of answers of Class 12 this year.

In a press conference, Sanjay Kumar, secretary, department of school education and literacy said, “Some students feel that they should have received higher marks than those actually awarded to them. I would like to emphasise that On-Screen Marking is neither a novel concept nor is this the first time it has been implemented.”

According to Kumar, the CBSE had first introduced the OSM system in 2014, but it could not continue then because of technical infrastructure limitations.

He said the system was successfully brought back this year during the Class 12 board examinations. Under the process, answer sheets were scanned and converted into PDF copies before evaluation. Kumar said answer sheets of around 98 lakh students were scanned for the examinations.



The official added that three levels of security were maintained during the scanning process. He also said one of the biggest advantages of digital evaluation was that errors in totalling marks had been removed. “One advantage of this has been that the mistakes that sometimes used to happen in totalling have been completely eliminated,” he said.

Kumar further said teachers were trained before the system was implemented. However, officials found around 13,000 answer sheets that could not be read properly after scanning because students had used very light-coloured ink.

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“Ultimately, it was also found that in the end, we had about 13,000 such answer sheets, which we found that no matter how many times we scanned them, there was some illegibility in them because the ink used was of very light colour,” he said.

These answer sheets were later checked manually by teachers and the marks were added to the system. Kumar said special attention had been given to security and accuracy so that the on-screen marking process remained reliable.

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Along with defending the new marking process, Kumar also announced changes related to re-evaluation and verification. “We will charge a fee of Rs 100 from any student who wishes to view their answer sheets; a separate fee of Rs 100 applies if they wish to have their papers validated; and a fee of Rs 25 applies for the re-checking of the answer to any specific question,” he said. He added that if a student’s marks increase after scrutiny or re-evaluation, the entire amount paid by the student would be refunded.

He said both the ministry of education and CBSE wanted to ensure that no student felt unfairly marked. “Whether it is the ministry of education or the CBSE, the welfare and concerns of all our children are of paramount importance to us,” Kumar said. He added that the provision for re-evaluation had always existed in the CBSE system and assured students that the board would ensure the awarded marks and totalling were “absolutely accurate”.

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