THE SABARMATI OF PAPER LEAKS
WHAT
Class IX question papers across CBSE schools are turning out to be identical
AND HOW?
This year, the CBSE has set class IX papers. But what they’ve forgotten is: Customising papers for each city and giving a common exam schedule
NOW WHAT?
There’s a mad scramble among parents to get hold of papers from schools where class IX exams have already taken place
DON’T TELL ME!
Some parents are even sourcing question papers from Delhi, where class IX exams took place in the first week of this month
YOGESH AVASTHI
(Ahmedabad Mirror_
Class IX CBSE students from across city schools are busy networking with each other instead of revising their chapters, this exam season. Students of a certain school conducting the Social Science exam today had procured the question paper on Wednesday itself from buddies at DPS Gandhinagar which held the exam on March 11.
You could blame the ‘paper leak’ on the Central Board of Secondary Education. Or should we call it the Central Benchmark for Stupid Exams?
For the first time, CBSE provided question papers for class IX to all schools under the new scheme of continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE). It came up with 300-odd question papers in each subject for 11,000 affiliated institutions in the country. This was done to ensure uniformity in how all schools conduct the summative assessment (term-end examination).
But with schools conducting exams on different dates, many students managed to get the questions beforehand by looking at the paper of another school where the exam of a particular subject had already been conducted.
The board should have either come up with a single set of question papers for each city and charted a commonexam schedule for all schools in that city OR should have had just one set of question papers and ensured a common exam schedule for its institutions all over the country, like they do for Board exams.
On March 12, an alert reader sent us a mail pointing out that the Social Science paper of DPS Gandhinagar was exactly the same as that of DPS Bopal. When our reporter investigated, he found out that several schools had identical question papers, thanks to CBSE’s goof-up. Helping the students get hold of the paper sets were coaching centres that were busy gathering these from different schools.
‘EXAM SCHEDULES ALSO BEING EMAILED’
THE SOCIAL Science paper of DPS Gandhinagar which conducted the exam on March 11 came in handy for DPS Bopal students which conducted the exam a couple of days later.
Similarly English and Hindi (group B) papers of DPS Bopal and Prakash School were identical; Science papers of Prakash School and DPS Bopal were the same.
Tulip, Maharaja Agrasen, St Kabir and DLA are the other schools currently conducting class IX exams.
“The schools get to download the question paper of a particular subject 12 hours before the exam from the CBSE website by keying in their login id and password,” said a principal of a city school on condition of anonymity.
A parent of a class IX student of DPS Bopal said: “Quality education, did CBSE say? I have had parents of kids from three schools asking for my son’s question papers. Everyday we have someone or the other taking xerox copies of these. Even my son is collecting papers from other schools. I see no need to stop him, though. When everyone is benefiting, why shouldn’t he?”
Says another parent: “The children are emailing each other the exam schedules too so that they know which school student to get in touch with for the question paper of the next exam. I know of a student’s parent who called up her niece in Delhi for papers as they had their class 9 exams in the first week of March.”
Hemant Shah, principal of Prakash Higher Secondary School, said: “I have been told that one of our exam papers was identical to that given out by some other school. Today we are conducting the Mathematics exam. And if we find out that our paper is identical to the paper of another school, we shall inform the Board authorities about it.”
We tried contacting Controller of Examinations (CBSE) M C Sharma several times, but he remained unreachable.
MIRROR CITIZEN JOURNALIST
On March 12, an alert reader (not willing to be named) sent us a mail pointing out that the Social Science paper of DPS Gandhinagar was exactly the same as that of DPS Bopal. When our reporter investigated, he found out that several schools had identical question papers, thanks to CBSE’s goof-up.
WHAT THE BOARD SHOULD’VE DONE: It should have either come up with a single set of question papers for each city and charted a common-exam schedule for all schools in that city OR should have had just one set of question papers and ensured a common exam schedule for its institutions all over the country, like they do for Board exams
Class IX question papers across CBSE schools are turning out to be identical
AND HOW?
This year, the CBSE has set class IX papers. But what they’ve forgotten is: Customising papers for each city and giving a common exam schedule
NOW WHAT?
There’s a mad scramble among parents to get hold of papers from schools where class IX exams have already taken place
DON’T TELL ME!
Some parents are even sourcing question papers from Delhi, where class IX exams took place in the first week of this month
YOGESH AVASTHI
(Ahmedabad Mirror_
Class IX CBSE students from across city schools are busy networking with each other instead of revising their chapters, this exam season. Students of a certain school conducting the Social Science exam today had procured the question paper on Wednesday itself from buddies at DPS Gandhinagar which held the exam on March 11.
You could blame the ‘paper leak’ on the Central Board of Secondary Education. Or should we call it the Central Benchmark for Stupid Exams?
For the first time, CBSE provided question papers for class IX to all schools under the new scheme of continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE). It came up with 300-odd question papers in each subject for 11,000 affiliated institutions in the country. This was done to ensure uniformity in how all schools conduct the summative assessment (term-end examination).
But with schools conducting exams on different dates, many students managed to get the questions beforehand by looking at the paper of another school where the exam of a particular subject had already been conducted.
The board should have either come up with a single set of question papers for each city and charted a commonexam schedule for all schools in that city OR should have had just one set of question papers and ensured a common exam schedule for its institutions all over the country, like they do for Board exams.
On March 12, an alert reader sent us a mail pointing out that the Social Science paper of DPS Gandhinagar was exactly the same as that of DPS Bopal. When our reporter investigated, he found out that several schools had identical question papers, thanks to CBSE’s goof-up. Helping the students get hold of the paper sets were coaching centres that were busy gathering these from different schools.
‘EXAM SCHEDULES ALSO BEING EMAILED’
THE SOCIAL Science paper of DPS Gandhinagar which conducted the exam on March 11 came in handy for DPS Bopal students which conducted the exam a couple of days later.
Similarly English and Hindi (group B) papers of DPS Bopal and Prakash School were identical; Science papers of Prakash School and DPS Bopal were the same.
Tulip, Maharaja Agrasen, St Kabir and DLA are the other schools currently conducting class IX exams.
“The schools get to download the question paper of a particular subject 12 hours before the exam from the CBSE website by keying in their login id and password,” said a principal of a city school on condition of anonymity.
A parent of a class IX student of DPS Bopal said: “Quality education, did CBSE say? I have had parents of kids from three schools asking for my son’s question papers. Everyday we have someone or the other taking xerox copies of these. Even my son is collecting papers from other schools. I see no need to stop him, though. When everyone is benefiting, why shouldn’t he?”
Says another parent: “The children are emailing each other the exam schedules too so that they know which school student to get in touch with for the question paper of the next exam. I know of a student’s parent who called up her niece in Delhi for papers as they had their class 9 exams in the first week of March.”
Hemant Shah, principal of Prakash Higher Secondary School, said: “I have been told that one of our exam papers was identical to that given out by some other school. Today we are conducting the Mathematics exam. And if we find out that our paper is identical to the paper of another school, we shall inform the Board authorities about it.”
We tried contacting Controller of Examinations (CBSE) M C Sharma several times, but he remained unreachable.
MIRROR CITIZEN JOURNALIST
On March 12, an alert reader (not willing to be named) sent us a mail pointing out that the Social Science paper of DPS Gandhinagar was exactly the same as that of DPS Bopal. When our reporter investigated, he found out that several schools had identical question papers, thanks to CBSE’s goof-up.
WHAT THE BOARD SHOULD’VE DONE: It should have either come up with a single set of question papers for each city and charted a common-exam schedule for all schools in that city OR should have had just one set of question papers and ensured a common exam schedule for its institutions all over the country, like they do for Board exams
