CBSE schools in TN leaking question papers, says whistleblower group
CBSE schools in Tamil Nadu are manipulating Class X and XII exam results by leaking question papers and getting teachers to help students, according to a whistleblower group.
The CBSE Schools’ Management Association (CSMA), an umbrella organisation of such schools in the state, said it had asked the Central Board for Secondary Education to cancel the exams, which began in December first week.
This academic year, CBSE introduced a new exam pattern for Classes X and XII. The first phase, in December, had multiple-choice questions and the second phase, scheduled for March, required 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 said fraudsters were violating this trust and sent to the CBSE an eight-page letter detailing how question papers were being 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 sheets. 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 the right option – ‘a’, ’b’ or ‘d’.
The CBSE got wind of this practice and decreed that only capital letters should be used when choosing the option. CSMA secretary P Ashok Shankar said 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.
Shankar said that since there was only one external observer per 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.