What Went Wrong With CBSE’s New On-Screen Marking System?

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is under fire after discrepancies appeared in the new On-Screen Marking (OSM) system introduced by the board for this year’s evaluation process.

There have been widespread problems in its adoption as evaluators struggle with the new system which has introduced unfamiliar workflows and produced sub-par answer script scans. Many parents also allege that multiple answer scripts have been mixed up.

A report from The Hindustan Times stated that CBSE governing body members suggested a pilot program across regional offices before rolling out the new OSM system for Class 12 board examinations this year. The CBSE ignored these views and went ahead without any significant pilot project.

What is OSM?

On-Screen Marking is a digital evaluation system where physical answer sheets are scanned and securely uploaded to an online portal, allowing teachers to evaluate them on a computer screen instead of marking physical papers manually.

The system also automatically totals the marks in an answer script. It was introduced to save significant time and costs associated with transporting physical answer sheets from one place to the other.

It allows evaluators to check answer scripts from their designated centres.

OSM was introduced to increase transparency and speed up the answer checking process for Class 12 board examinations.

OSM Under Fire

CBSE had formally announced the introduction of OSM on February 9, a week before Class 12 examinations were scheduled to begin.

A nationwide seminar on OSM was held on February 13 attended by teachers from all schools while the training portal was opened on February 15 for evaluators to practice on previous years’ answer books.

School Principals and teachers described these processes as formalities to The Hindustan Times while also claiming that at least two years of proper training was required before OSM rollout.

CBSE officials acknowledged that the new system threw up initial problems which included login issues, system overload and other technical glitches. Scanning deficiencies was another major problem as many copies could not be properly scanned and thus evaluated using the system.

Approximately 13,583 copies had to be manually checked after repeated scanning failures failed to produce legible copies, The Hindustan Times said.

The evaluation quality using the new system also came under question after the overall pass percentage in Class 12 fell 3.19% to 85.20%, the lowest since 2019.

Vedant Shrivastava

A class 12 student named Vedant Shrivastava alleged that the Physics answer sheet uploaded under his roll number did not belong to him.

This generated significant uproar online about the sanctity of the evaluation process and concerns of a possible breach. The CBSE categorically denied the presence of any kind of breach in the evaluation process.

Clarifying the mismatching copies uploaded under Shrivastava’s roll number a teacher involved in OSM evaluation told The Hindustan Times that the answer book had likely been shifted to manual evaluation after repeated scanning attempts failed.