India’s education system is under severe stress. The NEET fiasco which caused immense suffering to nearly 22 lakh students exposed the deep structural flaws within the National Testing Agency, where one part conducts the JEE seamlessly while another appears clueless and completely out of its depth in conducting another high-stakes examination. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has caused much anxiety to and harmed a significant proportion of some 18 lakh students who took the Class 12 exams this year and whose answer scripts were evaluated through On Screen Marking (OSM) for the first time. It appears that little training was given to the staff scanning the answer sheets, and that no SOPs were in place after consultations with experts. Yet, some one crore sets of answer papers were scanned in record time. Evaluators were not really put through the paces; not prepped fully for the new interface; nor their screen fatigue evaluated for its impact on scoring. Ideally, OSM should first be tested on a smaller subset of answer sheets in parallel with the regular mode to evaluate whether there is any statistically significant deviation in scores between the two methods. This would have borne out whether the system was truly prepared for what was presented as a reform and allowed corrective measures before full-scale adoption.

It appears none of this was done. The result: a clear reduction in student performance, which was too significant to be dismissed as coincidence. When students received their scanned answer scripts, their fears appeared to have been validated. Widespread reports of mismatched scripts, unevaluated supplementary sheets, and unclear scans flooded social media, while many students complained that they had not received their scanned copies. To tamp down anger, the CBSE had slashed the fees for accessing answer scripts and re-evaluation while promising refunds where re-evaluation was found to be justified. More than 1.25 lakh students applied for accessing nearly four lakh answer scripts within a few hours of the window opening. Since then, the deadline for script access was extended repeatedly before ending on May 25. The CBSE has not yet revealed the plans for re-evaluation which is likely to be of a higher order this year. The Education Minister has said that the IITs have now been involved in troubleshooting. What is at stake is not just the CBSE’s credibility but also the future of lakhs of students. The immediate task before the CBSE is to carry out the re-evaluation to the satisfaction of students. A long-term task would be to honestly address the root causes of the fiasco and implement solutions.