Students sitting the Central Board of Secondary Education’s Grade 12 mathematics exam on Monday got an unexpected surprise when they scanned a QR code printed on their question paper – which opened a YouTube video of Rick Astley’s 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up”, the song at the heart of one of the internet’s longest-running pranks.
Rickrolling, as the prank is known, involves tricking someone into clicking on a link that unexpectedly leads to the music video. Screenshots and videos of students scanning the code began circulating on X, Instagram, and Reddit shortly after the exam, flooding social media with memes and jokes about a whole bunch of recycled board exams.
CBSE on Tuesday moved to quash concerns over the fairness of the exam, issuing a press release asserting that the question papers are authentic. “The security of question papers remains without any compromise,” Dr Sanyam Bhardwaj, Controller of Examinations, said in the statement.
The board said the problem “appears” to be limited to a few sets of question papers in which a QR code, when scanned, links to a YouTube video. Not all students reported the same experience.
“I was not aware of the QR code incident until Monday evening when my colleagues told me about it. Immediately, I also scanned the QR code on my question paper and found that it was related to an English song,” said one student, who took the exam at a Ghaziabad centre, anonymously.
Some users wondered how the YouTube link appeared in a security feature designed to authenticate the test, while others speculated that the images had been edited or misinterpreted.
A mathematics teacher from a private school in Ghaziabad said the QR code was not meant for students. “It is up to the authorities involved in the board exam to ensure the integrity of the question paper. There seems to be some inadvertent errors by CBSE, despite it being a national board that also operates in several foreign countries. Several students have complained about this to me. CBSE should be more careful in designing question papers and ensuring proper QR codes to avoid embarrassment,” he said.
The board said the matter was “given serious consideration” and that “necessary steps are being taken” to ensure such issues do not reoccur.
The council did not respond to requests for comment about how the QR code ended up on the paper – and whether this was a vendor/contractor issue.
CBSE started printing QR codes on question papers after the 2019 paper leak scandal, when Class 12 Economics and Class 10 Mathematics papers were circulated on social media and messaging platforms ahead of exams. The leak forced the board of directors to re-conduct the twelfth grade economics exam. The board decided not to reconduct the Grade 10 mathematics exam, saying dropouts had been limited and many students had already appeared.
Each QR code on a question paper usually acts as a digital identifier, encapsulating information such as the subject, exam date, question paper set and print set, according to teachers familiar with the CBSE board exam process. The identifiers help authorities trace the chain of distribution of question papers and trace the source in case of a leak. When scanned with a regular mobile phone, they generally display either an encrypted string or a set of alphanumeric identifiers linked to CBSE’s internal database, which authorized systems can then decrypt to verify the origin of the paper, they said.
