TOI: Mumbai: Thursday, February 18, 2016.
In a first for students of the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), a Class-X girl from the city has got her answer sheet re-evaluated and marks increased after it was found to have discrepancies. The NIOS permits re-evaluation only for its Class XII students. It has made an exception in this case, though, and its officials said they will consider extending it to others as well.
The 16-year-old student, who was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and learning disability, appeared for her English paper in April 2015. To her shock, she was awarded only 46 marks, and the photocopy of her paper showed merely 36 marks. That was when her parents decided to escalate the matter to the authorities. "In her previous exams, she had scored over 90% in English and hence it was impossible that she had such a bad score. She was planning to join a good college, which wasn't possible with these marks," said her father. According to the parents' estimate, the girl should have scored at least 18 marks more.
The parents applied for a copy of her answer sheets under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and found that several of the questions were not rightly corrected or marked. "We wrote to the regional office in Pune and they set up a committee to look into it. The committee also found that the paper was not corrected properly but said they couldn't do much as the board does not allow re-evaluation for Class X," said the father. He then followed it up by writing to the minister of human resource development and even the Prime Minister on several occasions but there was no response.
On Wednesday, when TOI contacted board chairperson Chandra Bhushan Sharma, he got the girl's paper re-evaluated and an updated result on the website in the evening showed that she had scored 71 marks in the subject. "We asked an examiner to assess the paper again and found that it wasn't evaluated properly. So we have immediately changed her marks and updated the score on the website. We have also blacklisted the evaluator and he will not correct any more papers for the board," he said.
Sharma said this was the first time that such a case was brought to their notice.
"Class-X students can ask to re-tabulate the marks but can't opt for re-evaluation. This is the first time we have made a change in the marks since the discrepancy was brought to our notice and the mistake was apparent. For minor mistakes, we do not make changes," said Sharma.
Parents and experts, however, want the board to introduce re-evaluation for all. "For the past five months, we have knocked on every door to try and get the board's attention but to no avail. The child goes through a lot of stress and many lose out on an academic opportunity. All students must get photocopies of their answer sheet if asked for and there must an option to get the paper re-checked," said senior psychiatrist Dr Harish Shetty. Sharma said they will look into the issue on a larger scale.
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