THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As CBSE released the Term I results of the Class XII board exams late on Saturday, most of the students were disappointed at the low marks awarded. The students were also concerned that the marks of the first term exams would adversely affect their final results to be announced after completion of the second term exams in April.
With continuing school closures and examination disruptions due to Covid, CBSE had issued a new assessment scheme for Class X and XII students this year. It was decided to conduct the board exams in two terms and ensure continuous recording of internal assessment scores so as to have a variety of options to calculate a final score at the end of the year.
The students’ lack of familiarity with the Multiple Choice Question format in the term one exams and the confusing and erroneous questions are cited as reasons for the poor marks. Even when the first term exams were being conducted in December, there were widespread complaints about the Mathematics, Accountancy and English papers in particular. For instance, in the English paper, subjective topics such as letter writing were included in the objective question pattern. A few teachers had written to CBSE pointing out more than a dozen errors in some of the question papers.
Though the initial plan was to get the Optical Mark Reading (OMR) answer sheets evaluated in the respective schools, the board collected them towards the fag end of the exams. This was reportedly after complaints that a few schools were tampering with the OMR sheets after the examinations.
Meanwhile, there are growing demands to either scrap the Term I exams altogether or reduce its weightage. “We have written to the board with the demand to give very little weightage to the Term I exams as it will have a bearing on the final Class XII results,” said Indira Rajan, secretary-general, National Council of CBSE Schools.
In the wake of complaints, CBSE has announced that it has introduced an online dispute redressal mechanism for Term I examinations in which students can raise the disputes to the board through their schools.