CBSE to implement advanced technology to prevent question paper leak

Kolkata: The Department of School Education will use advanced technology from next year’s CBSE examinations to check incidents of question paper leak, Union School Education Secretary Anil Swarup said in Kolkata on Monday. [caption id=“attachment_4367735” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] CBSE logo. Image courtesy: cbse.nic.in[/caption] The CBSE had come under attack after the economics paper of the Class 12 board exams was leaked in March, affecting lakhs of students, and a re-examination was ordered. “The Secretary of Education has appointed a committee to explore how technology can be used to prevent any recurrence of such a situation”, Swarup said. He asserted that no CBSE official was involved in the leak scandal and that it was perpetrated by a handful of tech-savvy people. “Today, technology allows us to improve that situation. And we have to see that it is not repeated, keeping in mind that there are smarter people”, Swarup said. “From next year, it will be our endeavour to ensure that there is no such leak”, he added, replying to a query after a discussion on “Robust, just, reliable and student-friendly public examination system” organised by the Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce (MCC). Swarup took exception when a participant alleged that someone from the CBSE might have been involved in the paper leak. “We get hundreds of mails and if our official gets a mail at 10:15 am about a leak, you cannot stop the examination to be held at 4,000 centres and inconvenience 11 lakh children”, he said. Swarup also called for thinking out-of-the-box while imparting education to children. He said, “I suggest every school set up a nursery to enable the students see by themselves how plants grow. Why should we always think about teaching in a formal fashion?” Swarup also called upon the trusts running schools to come together to form a board, which will give affiliation to schools and conduct examinations after getting a certification from the government, which will assess their standard. On the allegation of “irregularities” in conducting the NEET national medical entrance examination in West Bengal, Swarup said, “The NEET has been conducted very neatly by the CBSE and there was absolutely nothing wrong”. “Some, who wanted the questions in Bengali, got those in English and yet again, some who wanted the papers in English got the Bengali papers. But at the hall, all of them said that they were ready to write the answers in the language of the questions they were given”, he said. However, they were ready to listen to any grievances in this regard, Swarup added.