CBSE may stop Class XII re-evaluation

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) may stop giving Class XII students option to demand re-evaluation of their papers of board examinations.

A proposal to do away with such facility has gained strength within the CBSE in view of the growing number of students applying for re-evaluation of their papers each year, making it difficult for the board to process their requests within a time frame with the manpower and resources available to it.

Most of the members of the CBSE’s governing council favoured scrapping the provisions at its meeting held on Wednesday. “However, no final decision has yet been taken on the issue,” a member of the CBSE’s governing council said.

The CBSE introduced provisions for re-evaluation for 12 subjects, including Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology, in 2014. It also provided students with an option to apply for a copy of their evaluated answer sheets and challenge the evaluation up to 10 questions by paying Rs 200 for each if they are not satisfied with it. The provision for re-evaluation of the papers of select 12 subjects of the total 187 was brought in after introduction of a new format of the joint entrance examination (JEE) to be conducted in two parts—JEE-Main and JEE Advance—for admissions to premier technical institutes, including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

As the nationwide test stipulated that only top-20 percentile holders of each board or those who secure over 75% marks would be eligible for admissions to IITs based on their performance in JEE-Advance, a demand was made to the CBSE for allowing re-evaluation of the Class XII board students’ marks.

“While answers of the questions have to be re-evaluated by some other teacher, the scores may go up or down depending on the teacher assigned to reevaluate the paper. If a student’s score goes down in the re-evaluation, he or she would began complaining seeking redressal,” sources said.

Initially, the number of students seeking revaluation was very moderate but it is growing up each year. The CBSE received about 1 lakh applications for re-evaluation in 2015.

“This system of re-evaluation has been creating a lot of problems. When the board is not offering such facility for all 187 subjects, why should it be offered for just 12 subjects,” a member of the governing council said.