Centre Sought IIT Experts To Help CBSE To Fix OSM Glitches

Students at receiving end

CBSE’s change to On-Screen Marking (OSM) for Class XII had been presented as a corrective to older problems in evaluation.

Under the new system, answer books are scanned digitally and evaluated electronically.

CBSE had said the process would reduce totalling errors, speed up correction and eliminate the need for verification disputes

Decision came in February, which, according to teachers and educators, gave very little time to them to train or prepare.

CBSE city coordinator Sanjeev Nampally says that if the camera misses even a single page during scanning, the system will not accept the answer sheet.

If the scanned paper is unclear, the examiner has the option to reject it and raise a remark.

CBSE Class XII results showed fall to about 85 per cent passes, leading to suspicion that OSM was to blame.

More than 98.6 lakh papers converted to OSM; more than 3 lakh students applied for re-evaluation.

CBSE’s tele-counselling support which appears to function only on working days has reportedly already seen a surge of calls.

Students have expressed their anxiety on other platforms as well, from parental scorn or self disappointment.

Causing more anxiety, CBSE says system glitch on May 21 and 22 led to incorrect excess fee demand from some students, while in other cases lesser amounts were charged.

CBSE to refund excess fee.

Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan seeks a detailed report from the CBSE over complaints of technical glitches faced by students resulting in server downtime, payment gateway glitches and operational lapses.

Extended last date for making applications ended on Sunday.

Portal for receiving re-evaluation requests will remain available for two days after the last scanned copy is dispatched.

Hyderabad: The Union education ministry on Sunday asked IIT experts to assist the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) after several days of complaints over technical failures in the board’s post-result services portal, where Class XII students reported problems accessing scanned answer sheets, completing payments and applying for re-evaluation under the newly introduced On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.

The intervention came amid mounting anxiety and outrage among students preparing simultaneously for engineering, medical and university admissions, many of whom said repeated glitches, blurred answer-script scans and uncertainty around deadlines had left them struggling to verify marks that could determine eligibility for higher education.

“It's been five days since I paid the fees for the scanned copy but I still have not received it. Even to make payment I struggled for a whole day, and finally succeeded on the next day at 4 am,” said Sukriti, a city student, adding, “Now it shows that I have completed and found my answer sheets. It is killing so much time for students in this crucial time as many of us are in competitive exam preparations.”

People’s frustration over the board’s new OSM system had, by the weekend, became something far larger with many demanding resignation of the Union education minister and questioning whether the system evaluating them could still be trusted.

“Everybody is upset about the OSM system and many of my friends did not even apply for scanned copies as they lost trust in the exam process,” said a student on the condition of anonymity.

Several screenshots circulating online showed the photocopy fee for four subjects allegedly climbing to nearly ₹2.77 lakh. Another user posted that the fee had changed from ₹1 to ₹69.67, then ₹8,000, before briefly displaying ₹69,420 per subject.

Students described refreshing the portal repeatedly through the night, unsure whether the figures were glitches, payment failures or actual charges. CBSE did not publicly confirm the fee anomaly, but the images travelled widely enough to turn a technical issue into public ridicule.

One student took to social media to write, “Your site was hacked, students were scammed.” But payment was not the only issue; several students said they paid for answer-sheet copies in all six subjects but received only five.

Aritra, who still has his maths copy pending, took to Twitter to express his frustration writing, “Today's the last day to apply for a photocopy, and within 6 hours it will end, but I still haven't received the Mathematics answer sheet photocopy yet!! What should I do now????”

Elsewhere, students complained that the scanned copies uploaded on the portal were too blurred to read properly. Some said page margins were cut off. Others questioned how re-evaluation could be meaningfully pursued if the answer scripts themselves were unclear.

“This (OSM) experiment should never have been conducted with Class XII students,” said Anubha Shrivastava Sahai, advocate and president of the India Wide Parents Association. “The website is not functioning properly and many students are unable to access or view their marksheets. This is a failure on the part of CBSE. Students who have already cleared JEE are now stuck with less than 75 per cent marks and are at risk of becoming ineligible for the next stage despite qualifying the entrance exam.”

But Sahai noted, “Some teachers have cited workload pressure, but ensuring proper coordination and issuing clear guidelines was CBSE’s responsibility. Why will a teacher correct an unclear paper, there was clearly some instruction lapse.”

On a note of assurance, Dr B. Ebenezer, vice-chairperson of the Hyderabad Sahodaya Schools Complex. said that the government and CBSE has acknowledged the issue so the students need not panic.