Suspend teachers for miscalculating board exam papers, CBSE tells schools

The Central Board of Secondary Education said on Wednesday it has served notices to schools to suspend five teachers in Delhi after miscalculations up to 55 marks were found in Class 10 and Class 12 board exams when the papers were re-evaluated at the request of the students involved.

This is the first instance of the board acting against teachers involved in such errors which could affect the careers of students. CBSE has also sought to suspend 15 teachers involved in such cases in Allahabad and a few more in Dehradun.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is likely to serve more notices to schools over calculation mistakes found during re-evaluation of board examination papers, a senior board official said.

So far, five teachers from the Delhi region — three from government schools and two from private schools — have been suspended after anomalies of up to 50-55 marks were found during the re-evaluation of Class 10 and 12 examination papers.

Maintaining that the most glaring examples of miscalculations in the Delhi region have already been reported, CBSE officials said a detailed report regarding the matter is being prepared. The re-evaluation saw some students in the Delhi region getting 50-55 marks more than what they had initially got when the results were declared in May this year. In one case, a student, who had initially failed in Urdu, passed after re-evaluation.

The Class 12 marks are especially crucial as Delhi University conducts admissions based on the board examination results. While such cases of miscalculations have been reported in the past too, this is the first time that such action has been initiated.

The CBSE, however, maintained that the percentage of mistakes have come down. For instance, in 2017, a total of 20,162 students from the Delhi region applied for re-evaluation, and in 4.97% cases, the marks were increased after re-evaluation. This year, 11,083 students from the Delhi region applied for re-evaluation, and marks were increased in 3.26% of the cases.

The CBSE had, on June 1, started the process of re-evaluation process for those who had appeared for the class 10 and 12 board examinations this year. The CBSE had declared both the class 10 and class 12 results in the last week of May. However, candidates who were unsatisfied with the marks they were awarded were able to apply for the re-evaluation process.

In 2017, the CBSE had decided to abolish the re-evaluation process but had to reintroduce it on a ‘first-come, first-serve’ basis after some students approached the Delhi High Court and the court intervened. The board had, last year, also set up two committees to look into the problems related to the evaluation process after receiving complaints from students and parents.

While the first committee was responsible for all looking into the evaluation and post-examination processes to identify and analyse discrepancies and suggest corrective measures to strengthen the process, the second committee was responsible for studying, analysing and suggesting systemic improvements in the evaluation process to make the system robust.A source said the first committee was also responsible for fixing responsibility by finding out the teachers/evaluators responsible for the evaluation errors.

According to the CBSE, the percentage of students applying for verification of marks in 2014, 2015 and 2016 were 2.31, 2.09 and 2.53 respectively.