The controversy surrounding the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) expanded on-screen marking (OSM) system has triggered an unusually intense backlash. Thousands of students and parents have complained about blurry scanned answer sheets, missing pages, technical glitches, delayed grievance-handling and confusion in the revaluation process. Reports that technical experts from two IITs had to address the digital infrastructure problem only deepened public anxiety. Many teachers, too, questioned whether digitisation had been implemented without adequate preparation or safeguards.
Surely, the criticism is valid. Any examination system that places immense psychological pressure on students cannot afford procedural chaos in evaluation. The simple logic is that credibility depends not only on strictness but also on reliability, transparency and humane execution. If answer scripts are unclear, technology malfunctions or students struggle even to access their own evaluated papers, trust inevitably erodes.
However, amid the outrage over OSM, another uncomfortable possibility deserves attention. What if the present crisis is exposing not only the failures of digital reform, but also the weaknesses of the earlier system that many had quietly accepted for years?
For over a decade, India celebrated soaring board examination scores as proof of educational progress. Every year brought record pass percentages, extraordinary numbers of students crossing the 90 and 95 percent thresholds and schools proudly advertising “centum results”. The public narrative was simple: students were becoming smarter, schools more effective and the education system more successful.
But beneath the celebration was a growing contradiction. Learning outcomes did not improve at the same pace as marks. Universities repeatedly complained that students entering higher education often struggled with analytical writing, conceptual understanding, independent thinking and sustained academic engagement despite excellent board scores. Employers pointed to skill deficits. Coaching culture expanded because memorisation and examination strategy remained safer than genuine intellectual depth. Inflation of marks became systemic.
Schools chased high averages to protect their reputations, parents demanded ever-higher scores amid brutal cut-offs and coaching centres turned results into marketing tools. Examination boards, too, faced pressure to sustain generous pass percentages. Over time, high marks ceased to signify exceptional achievement and became instruments of reassurance. This context matters enormously while evaluating the current OSM controversy.
The CBSE argues that digitised evaluation reduces totalling errors, standardises marking practices, limits manual intervention and enforces closer adherence to marking schemes. In principle, those are legitimate objectives. A more traceable evaluation system can reduce inconsistencies that often characterised manual checking. At the same time, stricter scrutiny may also reduce the discretionary generosity that gradually became embedded in traditional valuation cultures.
Yet clearly, the current implementation has not been smooth. If evaluators were forced to decipher blurred scans for hours, if servers failed or if scripts were improperly uploaded, then the reform process itself requires urgent correction. Technology cannot automatically become synonymous with reform. Digitisation merely changes the medium; it does not guarantee fairness or integrity.
Still, it is worth asking whether part of the public anger also reflects discomfort with stricter assessment itself. When a system grows accustomed to liberal evaluation, even moderate standardisation can feel punitive. If tighter marking schemes reduce inflated scores, students and parents may naturally perceive the change as unfair, especially in a hyper-competitive environment where a few marks determine career trajectories. However, lower scores do not automatically mean weaker students. They may also indicate that earlier benchmarks had become unrealistically inflated.
Let’s not forget that an examination system where extraordinary scores become routine eventually weakens its own legitimacy. If tens of thousands routinely score above 95 percent, differentiation collapses. The result is a culture where anything below near-perfect marks generates panic, disappointment and social anxiety.
The real challenge, therefore, is not whether evaluation should become rigorous. It should. No education system can sustain credibility indefinitely through inflated scores and cosmetic success rates. The challenge is whether rigour can be introduced without sacrificing fairness, clarity and student confidence. For that, teachers need proper training. Technical infrastructure must be independently audited. Students should have transparent access to answer scripts. Revaluation mechanisms must be efficient.
Most importantly, educational reform must address the larger culture of excessive competition that turns examinations into life-defining events. It may be worthwhile to recall the lofty aims of the National Education Policy, 2020. It repeatedly speaks of critical thinking, conceptual understanding, creativity and holistic learning. Those ambitions cannot coexist with an ecosystem addicted simultaneously to inflated marks and extreme academic pressure.
The present controversy should therefore not become a simplistic battle between technology and tradition, or between strictness and sympathy. The real issue is whether India can build a rigorous examination system without being ruthless, standardised without being mechanical and credible without being inflated.
John J Kennedy | Former Professor and Dean, Christ (Deemed) University, Bengaluru
(Views are personal)