Education board staffers indicted for goof-up in English paper evaluation

A fact-finding team of the Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education has indicted employees of two departments of the board for the goof-up in the evaluation of Class XII English exam. The fact-finding team has submitted its report to Major Vishal Sharma (retd), Secretary of the board, who will initiate appropriate action after going through it.

Major Sharma told The Tribune that as per the service rules, he would issue show-cause notices to the employees concerned of the two departments of the board and seek their replies. If not satisfied with their replies, a charge-sheet would be issued to them. A departmental inquiry would also be conducted against them on the basis of the charge-sheet, he added.

The Class XII English exam, which was to be held on March 8 this year, was rescheduled for March 29 after teachers of Government Senior Secondary School at Chowari in Chamba district ‘mistakenly’ opened the Class XII English question paper instead of the Class X paper, a day before the exam was to be held on March 7.

Later, while evaluating the answer-sheets of the Class XII English paper, the officials of the education board used the wrong answer keys, resulting in the award of incorrect marks.

In the results announced on May 17, 71,591 students passed the Class XII English exam. Later, after three days, the education board admitted the mistake and rectified the results. As many as 76,315 students were declared pass.

Overall, the new figures indicated a higher pass percentage of 88.64 as compared to the 83.16 pass percentage, as per the previously declared results.

On the back foot, for this goof-up in the evaluation of the Class XII English exam, Education Minister Rohit Thakur had announced, “Action will be taken as per the rules against the persons responsible for the mistake.”

Soon after the wrong exam results were declared, a preliminary inquiry conducted by the board found that wrong answer keys of the cancelled paper were uploaded due to a “human error”, which led to discrepancies in the declaration of the Class XII English paper results.

Himachal Tribune