What If every CBSE-OSM answer script had been opened?

The CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) experiment has now emerged as one of the most serious evaluation controversies in the recent history of school examinations. Reports of extraordinary mark revisions following verification and re-evaluation—including changes approaching 20 marks out of 60 in highly structured Science subjects—have raised fundamental questions about the fairness, reliability, and integrity of the entire OSM process.(Sign up for THEdge, The Hindu’s weekly education newsletter.)For more than six weeks, public attention remained focused on portal failures, payment disruptions, delayed access to answer scripts, and the inability of thousands of students to obtain copies of their evaluated answer books. However, these operational issues may have obscured a more fundamental question: did the restricted disclosure of digitised answer scripts prevent the true extent of digitisation and evaluation deficiencies from being independently discovered?

Upcoming webinar: Toppers, ICAI explain how to crack CA examThe concern arises because significant deficiencies reportedly surfaced even within the relatively small number of answer scripts that entered public scrutiny. If such issues could emerge from this limited sample, what might wider scrutiny have revealed had all digitised answer scripts been proactively disclosed? In other words, did restricted disclosure prevent a much larger Pandora’s box of deficiencies from coming to light? That question goes to the heart of transparency, public accountability, and confidence in one of India’s largest school examination systems.What did the limited sample reveal?Even within the relatively small pool of answer scripts that reached verification and re-evaluation, several cases have emerged involving extraordinary increases in marks, including in highly structured and deterministic Science subjects where well-defined marking schemes would ordinarily be expected to produce only limited variation between evaluators. Every mark matters. A few illustrative examples are noteworthy:• Sample 1 (Physics): A student initially awarded 71 out of 100 secured 90 out of 100 after re-evaluation. The increase arose entirely from the theory component, where the marks rose from 41 to 60—a revision of 19 marks, or nearly one-third of the theory paper.• Sample 2 (History): A student’s marks increased from 74 to 97, a revision of 23 marks after re-evaluation.• Sample 3 (All India Rank 1): A student who had initially scored 100 in three subjects and 81 and 95 in the remaining two, secured 100 out of 100 in all five subjects after re-evaluation, thereby achieving an All India Rank of one.These are only a few examples drawn from the 1.47 lakh students whose re-evaluation results have been declared. In addition, the re-evaluation results for approximately 16,800 other candidates who were able to apply are still awaited. The reasons for these pending cases, the nature of the revisions that may eventually emerge, and the experience of the much larger population of students who never obtained an opportunity to seek re-evaluation remain unknown.These examples do not, by themselves, establish systemic deficiencies, but they demonstrate that significant revisions were identified even within a limited sample—raising the obvious question of what wider scrutiny might have revealed.How did the OSM design lead to limited disclosure?The limited disclosure of answer scripts was not merely the result of portal glitches or payment failures; it stemmed from the design of the OSM review process. Under the earlier Pen-and-Paper (PnP) system, answer scripts existed only in physical form and therefore had to be retrieved, scanned, and supplied on demand. Under OSM, however, every answer script had already been digitised during the evaluation process. In principle, students could therefore have been given immediate access to their digitised scripts without applications, fees, or additional processing—a practice CBSE had long followed for scanned records of MCQ-based examinations.Instead, OSM required students to apply, pay fees, and rely on portal access merely to obtain answer scripts that were already available in digital form. These procedural requirements created the first bottleneck and exposed students to the portal congestion and payment failures that dominated the controversy.The second structural flaw lay in the verification process. Under the PnP system, verification primarily confirmed that all answers had been evaluated, marks had been correctly transferred, and totals had been accurately computed. Under OSM, however, CBSE itself acknowledged seven categories of deficiencies, most of which relate to digitisation and document management, including blurred scans, missing pages, omitted supplementary sheets, missing diagrams or maps, wrong answer scripts, and evaluation against an incorrect question paper. Verification, therefore, became indispensable because these deficiencies first had to be identified and corrected before meaningful re-evaluation could occur.Yet students were required first to obtain their answer scripts, then complete verification, and only thereafter become eligible for re-evaluation, even though the two windows overlapped. Any delay in obtaining the digitised script or completing verification effectively denied a meaningful opportunity for re-evaluation. Since verification was largely necessitated by deficiencies acknowledged by CBSE itself, a strong case can be made that it should have been proactive and free of charge.Thus, failure at any stage—whether due to restricted access, portal disruptions, payment failures, delayed disclosure, or incomplete verification—prevented progression to the next. Limited disclosure, therefore, became not merely an operational difficulty but a structural constraint that kept the overwhelming majority of answer scripts outside independent verification and re-evaluation.Did the limited sample reveal only the tip of the iceberg?The true extent of deficiencies remains unknown because the overwhelming majority of answer scripts never underwent independent scrutiny. When significant deficiencies emerge from a limited sample, the logical response is to widen scrutiny—not to assume that the remaining undisclosed scripts are error-free.In the present case, nearly 98 lakh answer scripts were generated for approximately 17.7 lakh students. However, only about 11 lakh scripts, covering roughly four lakh students were disclosed, and only about 3.8 lakh answer scripts were ultimately verified. Consequently, more than 95% of the answer scripts were never independently scrutinised by the students to whom they belonged.Even within this limited sample, substantial mark revisions and evaluation anomalies were identified. While these findings do not prove similar deficiencies in the undisclosed scripts, neither do they justify assuming that the remaining scripts were error-free. The overwhelming majority never underwent independent scrutiny.It represents the central statistical blind spot of the OSM controversy. The absence of complaints from undisclosed answer scripts reflects a lack of scrutiny, not necessarily a lack of deficiencies. In quality assurance, the absence of inspection is not evidence of the absence of defects.The real issue, therefore, is not whether larger deficiencies certainly existed, but whether the process itself prevented their discovery. Universal disclosure would have enabled students to independently verify their digitised answer scripts, thereby either strengthening confidence in the system or identifying genuine deficiencies requiring correction.The central question, therefore, remains: did the restricted disclosure of answer scripts prevent a much larger “Pandora’s box” of digitisation and evaluation deficiencies from coming to light? Until universal disclosure and independent scrutiny are permitted, that question is likely to remain unanswered.The unanswered questionsThe limited disclosure of answer scripts leaves several fundamental questions unanswered:• If substantial mark revisions emerged from a relatively small sample, what would wider scrutiny of all digitised answer scripts have revealed?• Why were all digitised answer scripts not proactively disclosed when they already existed in digital form?• Why were applications, fees, and portal access made prerequisites for obtaining answer scripts that had already been digitised?• Why did portal failures and payment disruptions become barriers to transparency instead of triggering proactive disclosure to all students?• Why were verification and re-evaluation windows overlapped when re-evaluation depended upon the completion of verification?• Why were approximately 20,000 applicants reportedly still awaiting their answer scripts weeks after applying?• How many answer scripts were found to have each of the seven notified categories of deficiencies relating to digitisation and evaluation?• How many students ultimately received revised marks after verification and re-evaluation, and what was the distribution and magnitude of those revisions?• Given the scale of the controversy, why did CBSE not proactively place regular updates in the public domain, consistent with the spirit of proactive disclosure under Section 4(2) of the RTI Act, 2005, instead of leaving students and parents to rely on fragmented information?• After the Union Education Minister publicly acknowledged the difficulties faced by students and assured corrective action, what concrete systemic measures were taken to ensure that every affected student received a fair opportunity for verification and re-evaluation?• Why were the overwhelming majority of answer scripts never subjected to independent scrutiny by the students concerned?• Most importantly, if confidence in the OSM process is well-founded, why not disclose all digitised answer scripts now? Would such disclosure strengthen public confidence—or reveal a much larger Pandora’s box of digitisation and evaluation deficiencies?The way forward: A 3-step workflow for a 7-day windowThe controversy can still be resolved through a transparent, student-centric review process. Since every answer script has already been digitised, restoring confidence requires only three practical steps.Step 1 (Day 1): Universal disclosure: Release all digitised answer scripts, free of cost, to every student through registered email, WhatsApp, and the respective schools.Step 2 (Days 1–3): Verification: Ask every student, parent, and school to verify the completeness and authenticity of the digitised answer script and report any of the seven notified deficiencies. Students whose scripts are free from such deficiencies may immediately proceed to re-evaluation.Step 3 (Days 2–7):Re-evaluation: After verified or corrected answer scripts are made available, permit re-evaluation of identified questions or awarded marks and publish anonymised statistics on verification deficiencies and mark revisions to strengthen public confidence.In either case, transparency serves students’ interests, strengthens institutional credibility, and upholds the integrity of public examinations. In a national examination affecting nearly 17.7 lakh students, transparency is not an administrative choice—it is a fundamental requirement of fairness and public trust.(Prof. Rajeev Kumar is a former Computer Science Professor at IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, BITS Pilani, and JNU, and a former scientist at DRDO and DST.)