TN CBSE schools leaking question papers, manipulating results: Plaint

TN CBSE schools leaking question papers, manipulating results: Plaint

Ram.Sundaram@timesgroup.com

Chennai:24.12.2021

Some CBSE schools across Tamil Nadu have been manipulating Class X and Class XII exam results by leaking question papers and getting their teachers to help students answer them, according to a complaint to the school board.

The whistleblower is the CBSE Schools’ Management Association (CSMA), an umbrella organisation of such schools in Tamil Nadu. It has asked the Central Board for Secondary Education to cancel the exams, which began in December first week.

This academic year, CBSE had introduced a new exam pattern for Classes X and XII. The first phase, in December, had multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and the second phase, scheduled for March, requires descriptive answers.

The CBSE allowed all schools to conduct and evaluate the December exam papers on their own, with only one external supervisor. The CSMA says the fraudsters are violating this trust.

The CSMA has sent to the CBSE an eight-page letter detailing how question papers were leaked to students through WhatsApp, LAN and as hard copies. The students would be made to sit in a separate hall and given the answers before they were sent to the exam halls.

Students were also taught to manipulate the OMR sheets.

Teachers changed answers in CBSE schools: CSMA

First, the schools asked students to write option ‘c’ (in lower case), in the last answer box if they were not sure of the answer. After the exam, the teachers would change the ‘c’ to ‘a’ or ‘b’ or ‘d’, whichever was the right answer, according to the letter accessed by TOI. Sources said it was easy to change ‘c’ (lowercase) to the other letters, which was why the students were asked to write it when they were not sure of the answer.

The CBSE got wind of this practice — by this time the major subjects were done — and decreed that only capital letters should be used when choosing the answer option. CSMA secretary P Ashok Shankar says the scamsters then started telling the students to leave the boxes empty if they didn’t know the answers. The teachers would later fill in the correct answers.

Ashok Shankar said that since there was only one external observer in a school, teachers could easily manipulate the answer scripts. In many schools, 15 to 20 students got full marks, and no student failed because of this malpractice. “The career and the spirit of the students stand totally shattered today and their future has come under a cloud,” he said.

Though the CBSE’s Chennai regional officer Dinesh Ram was unavailable for comment, other board sources confirmed they were looking into the complaint. “The board had trusted the schools to conduct the exam in a fair manner. It is unfortunate if they misused the loopholes in the process,” said a senior CBSE official requesting anonymity.

The CBSE has announced that it will not declare pass or fail status for term I exams. Only marks will be considered while offering the year-end results, the official added.