The Central Board of Secondary Education appears to have ignored the views of its board members on conducting pilot projects across regional offices before rolling out the new on-screen marking (OSM) system for Class 12 board examinations this year, according to minutes of the meeting seen by HT.
Instead, the board conducted a two-day exercise involving just 100 teachers in five Delhi schools in January – teachers who participated told HT that they advised CBSE not to go ahead with the rollout, citing the need for better features, more training and adaptation to the system.
The system is now at the center of the storm, with assessors saying OSM introduced a completely bizarre workflow, produced poor scans of answer scripts and incorrectly scored marks, while parents claimed many scripts were mixed up.
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CBSE officially announced the implementation of OSM on February 9, just a week before the start of Class 12 exams on February 17. The council then held demonstrations, webinars and mock assessments, which school principals and evaluators described as formalities rather than nationally organized training for a major shift in assessment practice. The board has started the actual assessment work under OSM from March 7, CBSE officials said.
According to the minutes of the June 2025 board meeting, members suggested that OSM “may be implemented in all topics only after pilot projects in some topics across the different regional offices of the board have been completed.” The administrative body “took note of the proposal.” CBSE has 22 regional offices. No such experiments were conducted before commissioning this year.
Teachers participating in the January pilot round told HT that they had warned CBSE that the system needed further improvement. “We told the officials that OSM requires at least one or two years of proper training before going live. During the evaluation from March 7 onwards, many teachers were not familiar with the software and learned effectively while evaluating the live answer scripts,” said a teacher from a school in Delhi who participated in both the trial run and the live evaluation.
CBSE held a nationwide webinar on OSM on February 13 attended by all schools and their teachers, and opened its practice portal on February 15 to allow assessors to practice answer books of previous years. At a press conference on May 17, officials said that nearly 300,000 teachers had logged into the portal for training, while about 77,000 teachers eventually participated in the evaluation.
A second assessor told HT that teachers were under pressure from CBSE to complete the audit quickly so that the results could be declared on time and the digital rollout could be expected to be a success. A private school principal said: “The teachers had daily goals. Speed was more important than careful reading.”
Evaluators said restrictions on screen-based assessment exacerbated the problem. One physics teacher involved in the assessment said: “In manual screening, you can turn pages, revisit answers and catch missed steps. On screen, answers can be easily overlooked.”
A mathematics teacher said that fatigue after spending long hours on the screen affected the identification of steps. “Some residents still get familiar with the software while checking live answer books. With physical copies, it’s easy to notice unusual handwriting or answers scrawled in the corners. Digitally, they can be missed,” the teacher said.
CBSE did not respond to a specific query as to why a district-wide dry run was not being undertaken. Instead, officials pointed to a press conference on May 17 where they said CBSE held a nationwide webinar on OSM on February 13 attended by all schools and their teachers, and opened its practice portal on February 15 to allow assessors to practice on answer books of previous years.
Officials acknowledged at the May 17 press conference that OSM had caused initial technical glitches, including login issues, system overload, and scanning deficiencies. Of the 9,866,622 answer books assessed this year, 68,018 had to be re-scanned due to poor image quality and 13,583 were manually scanned after repeated scanning failed to produce legible copies.
The amount of student interest is reflected in the post-result numbers. As of May 26, CBSE has received 404,319 applications for scanned copies of 1,131,961 Class 12 answer books – a jump of over 208% in applications and 301% in answer book requests compared to last year.
CBSE attributed this rise to the sharp cut in fees announced on May 17, which brought down the cost of the scanned copy of $700 l $100 per topic.
Students, parents and school administrators told HT that the increase also reflects concern over the quality of assessment after the board’s overall Class 12 pass percentage fell by 3.19 percentage points to 85.20% – the lowest since 2019.
Concerns were not limited to overall success rates. In one widely discussed case reported by HT earlier, a Class XII student Vedant Shrivastava claimed that the physics answer sheet uploaded under his name number did not belong to him.
CBSE admitted the error and later submitted the correct paper.
One of the teachers involved in the OSM assessment told HT that Shrivastava’s answer book was likely converted to manual assessment after repeated scanning attempts failed.
“That’s probably what happened in this case,” the teacher said. CBSE said such cases are rare, adding that it has settled two such complaints this year.
CBSE first piloted OSM in 2014 for selected Class 10 subjects across different districts and two Class 12 subjects in Delhi, but scaled it down due to survey and connectivity constraints. Despite the current controversy, officials said at a press conference on May 17 that OSM will continue with board exams next year.
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Former CBSE Chairman Ashok Ganguly said the initiative was promising but needed better preparation. “No doubt this is a good initiative but we have to be adequately prepared for it.
Proper survey, training and retraining of teachers, discipline of middle executives and revival of old powerful systems such as external mechanism are all necessary to ensure the credibility of the process, he said.
Many students have not yet received their scanned copies before the reassessment window. Ranchi-based Sartha Siddhant said he applied more than five days ago but had received only two of the five required answer sheets.
“I have not yet received my physics, chemistry and computer science transcripts, and I need them to check my answers before opening the reassessment window,” he said. The Council’s portal for mark checking and re-evaluation is scheduled to be launched on May 29.
