Exam fail: Indian students complain en masse about marking errors in key final exams

National outcry has erupted in India after more than 400,000 students have requested copies of their exam papers and answer sheets amid an outcry over marking errors in the country’s most important school-leaving exams. Within days of the grade 12 exam results being issued, students began reporting marking discrepancies they linked to a new digital marking system. The government-run Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) says it has received requests for 1.1 million answer sheet copies from more than 400,000 students to crosscheck the results. At least 1.7 million students sat the class 12 exams, which are key to university admissions. The board says the new on-screen marking (OSM) system is aimed at reducing human error and increasing efficiency. Instead, many students say it has resulted in wrong grades. In the new system, physical copies of answer sheets are scanned and uploaded to an online portal for teachers to evaluate, with a software then calculating the total mark. Some students said scanned answer sheets were incomplete or had missing pages, while others reported incorrect marking, blurry scans and mismatched answer sheets. One mother, Geetu Moza, posted on X that her daughter had lost at least 30 marks despite answers that “exactly matched the official answer”. “Do the authorities even understand what 30-35 marks can mean for a Class 12 student whose entire future and admission process depends on these scores?” she said. …