CBSE common ques paper turns into a joke

To prepare for her maths paper the next day, Shweta (name changed), a Class IX student of Gurgaon’s Summer Fields, practised with a set of questions given at Amity International School (Gurgaon) the day before.

To prepare for her maths paper the next day, Shweta (name changed), a Class IX student of Gurgaon’s Summer Fields, practised with a set of questions given at Amity International School (Gurgaon) the day before.

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On Wednesday, she found herself answering the same questions in school.

This was no miracle, but a loophole in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (first-ever) initiative to provide question papers for Class IX final exam across all its schools.

The Board has come up with 300-odd question papers in each subject for 11,000 affiliated institutions in the country. This was done to ensure uniformity in how all schools conduct the summative assessment (term-end examination).

But the absence of a common exam schedule has led to many schools giving out identical question papers on different days.

As a result, students of St Cecilia’s Public School, Vikaspuri were on February 26 given math papers used at Holy Child Senior Secondary School in Tagore Garden on February 22.

"The CCE is new for all of us," said CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi, adding: "We will incorporate changes as and when problems surface."

"The feedback on this initiative will be incorporated for the next summative assessment," he said. But there will be no re-tests for now.