Answer key inconsistencies add to anxieties of CBSE Class XII students

Chennai: Amid the technical glitches and stringent corrections this year, CBSE Class XII students looking to apply for revaluation are facing a new problem — inconsistencies in answer keys and a lack of clarity on whether they will get back lost marks.Some students said some of the answers that were marked wrong turned out to be correct. But they were different from the ones marked in the answer key, which was used for evaluation. School heads said that there were inconsistencies with the answer key too.In the physics set 1 paper, a question on vector electric fields presented two ways to solve the problem, and both led to two different sets of answers. But the answer key mentioned only one set.“The physics question can be answered theoretically and numerically, both giving two different possibilities. But since only one of the answers is provided, there is no guarantee that the other set of answers will be considered. The student, while applying for revaluation, needs to clearly mention the methodology used, and provide the reasoning. Whether they will get marks or not is not something we can be certain of,” said the principal of a school at Adyar.A question in the math paper too had a similar inconsistency with a sum, where the answer key provided two values. A student who did not write the second value may have lost marks.This year, CBSE had introduced on-screen marking for Class XII evaluation, where students’ answer sheets were scanned and uploaded onto a digitally secured portal.“The problem is that the board is likely going to go by the same marking scheme answer key for revaluation too. Even teachers are unsure whether we will get our marks,” a student of KSN Higher Secondary School said.Educationists, however, said that it was safer for students to explore all options in a question and bring out all possible answers if the problem was unclear. “In the past too, there have been several instances of CBSE not wording its questions properly resulting in more than one answer,” said Balaji Sampath, educationist.