In what could provide major relief to thousands of students upset by errors in this year’s Class XII Mathematics exam paper, the Directorate of Government Examinations has decided to uniformly award seven ‘grace’ marks to all students.
Following a written assurance to this effect given by the Director of Government Examinations, D Vasundara Devi, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday disposed of a petition seeking grace marks for the Mathematics paper due to mistakes in the question paper.
The petitioner K R Ramalingam had pleaded that grace marks be given to all students who took the Mathematics examination, contending that the question paper was at variance with the approved blueprint. In her counter affidavit, Devi insisted the question paper was set as per the blueprint but said the government had taken a decision to award grace marks for two questions.
A scheme committee, constituted by the government following four complaints, decided to award the marks. In Question No 13 (Paper Code A), there was a printing mistake. Hence the panel recommended that one mark be awarded to students who had selected option (2) or (4) as the answer. Similarly, in the question papers distributed in Erode district, the ‘minus’ symbol was not printed legibly in Question No 41. Hence, all students will be awarded six marks for it even if they solved the problem assuming the figure was ‘5’ instead of ‘-5’.
Countering allegations on variance in the blueprint and question paper, Devi said none of the 6,500 teachers deployed for valuation had complained about such a discrepancy. Denying that the question paper was tough, she said interim reports received from all 55 answer script valuation centres had revealed that the pass percentage and number of candidates scoring centum in the subject were significant.
Considering the assurances given, a bench of justices Chitra Venkataraman and S Vimala disposed of the petition.