New Delhi, May 17 -- The Ministry of Education on Sunday dismissed concerns about On-Screen Marking (OSM) affecting students' scores in the class 12 exams, saying it is not new for the CBSE and special attention was given to ensure that the marking remained accurate.
OSM is a norm followed internationally to conduct transparent evaluation, School Education Secretary, Ministry of Education, Sanjay Kumar, said at a press conference here.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has also reduced the charges for re-evaluation and verification of an answer sheet to Rs 100, Kumar said.
This comes amid concerns being raised by students and parents that the drop in the pass percentage in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) class 12 exams is due to OSM.
Kumar also said that out of 98 lakh answer sheets evaluated this year, more than 13,000 were manually checked as there were some legibility issues despite repeated scanning of these sheets.
The school education secretary said the OSM system is not something new nor has it been implemented for the first time.
"The CBSE had introduced OSM in 2014. At that time, from a technical perspective, it was felt that continuing it immediately would not be feasible because of the existing infrastructure and setup. However, we have reintroduced it this year," he said.
He said a major advantage of introducing OSM is the flexibility it provides.
"Earlier, when the CBSE conducted evaluation or marking, it was generally done within the geographical jurisdiction of the respective regional offices. However, with OSM, it has now become possible to have answer sheets evaluated even outside the regional office area," the school education secretary explained.
Kumar said OSM is being used by many institutions internationally as well as at the national level.
"If we look at school boards, it is used by the International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge boards as well. In fact, it has become a norm internationally because through technology, it enables us to conduct the entire system in a more transparent manner," he said.
On the evaluation process, Kumar said, "For class 12, 98 lakh sheets were scanned and three levels of security were followed during the process."
During the evaluation process, it was found that in some answer sheets, despite repeated scanning, there were some legibility issues because the ink used was of a very light colour, he said.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.