Published Jun 09, 2026 | 1:19 PM ⚊ Updated Jun 09, 2026 | 1:19 PM
(Representational image/ iStock)
Synopsis: “Many teachers have complained about the on-screen marking system. They say that answer scripts are sometimes unclear or blurred on the screen, making evaluation difficult,” Sri Ramakrishnan, a student from Chennai said, adding, “There is a possibility that correct answers could be overlooked, causing students to lose marks.”
“Marks should reflect the student’s hard work and knowledge, not the speed of the evaluation process,” Sri Ramakrishnan, a student from Chennai said in a measured voice, choosing his words carefully.
He is a Class 12 student who spent months preparing for board examinations that he understood, as most Indian students do, would shape everything that follows. College. Career. Opportunity.
When the results arrived, his Economics score landed well below what he expected. He did not rage, he asked a question that has since travelled across classrooms, social media threads, and protest marches across India: Was this a fair assessment of what I actually know?
He is not alone. Students who sat the 2026 CBSE Class 12 board examinations are raising the same question from cities as far apart as Chennai and Bengaluru.
Their accounts, drawn from their own direct experiences with the On-Screen Marking system, the re-evaluation portal, and their schools, describe a rollout that left many of them feeling they were absorbing problems they had no role in creating.
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Rida, 18, studies at Sherwood Hall Senior Secondary School in Chennai. She describes the moment she saw her Mathematics score with a clarity that has not faded.
She had expected significantly higher, she barely passed.
“A lot of my friends and relatives also got marks that were much lower than what they expected,” she told South First. “It was really upsetting to see because many of us worked hard throughout the year and we felt that our results did not reflect our actual performance. For many of us, it has affected our confidence and made us question the accuracy of the evaluation process.”
The disappointment did not stay private. Rida moved, as thousands of students did, toward the official remedy CBSE provided: applying for a photocopy of her evaluated answer sheet and requesting re-evaluation.
The process, she said, did not go smoothly.
“When I applied for a photocopy of my Maths answer sheet, the payment was deducted from my account, but the application was not processed properly,” she said. “Even after receiving the payment confirmation, I had to wait almost ten days to receive the photocopy, but many of my friends got theirs within three or four days.”
She described a portal that crashed repeatedly, and was made worse by what she saw as a misalignment of priorities inside the board’s digital infrastructure.
“Instead of having a reliable and smooth-running website, CBSE had given us the option to change the colours of the background,” she said. “They focused more on aesthetics rather than functionality.”
When CBSE responded to the growing criticism by revising the fee structure for re-evaluation, Rida said she did not read it as accountability.
The board reduced its per-subject re-evaluation fee to ₹25, down from a previous structure that charged ₹700 for scanned copies, ₹500 for verification, and ₹100 per question for revaluation.
“Instead of properly addressing students’ concerns, they offered photocopies and re-evaluation, both of which were overpriced,” she said. “It felt like they were just trying to save face rather than actually wanting to help. It was a poor attempt at damage control.”
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Her teachers, she said, were personally supportive but institutionally limited.
“My teachers were supportive but there wasn’t much they could do. Most of them encouraged students to apply for photocopies and re-evaluation if they felt there was a mistake. Apart from that, there wasn’t much help available.”
On the students who chose to speak publicly despite the backlash they faced, Rida was direct.
“It takes a lot of courage to raise concerns about something that affects so many people. Unfortunately, they have faced criticism and online abuse instead of being heard. Students who are sharing their experiences and asking questions should be listened to, not attacked.”
A student from the same school in Chennai, who wished to remain anonymous, said her own results came back well. Her peers in the Science stream, she said, did not share that experience.
“Countless peers who took Science as well as those who took Physical Education faced quite a surprise,” she said. “Students were expecting scores that were 10–20 marks higher, but the actual marks were much lower than expected. It was really unfortunate.”
The Chennai student cited a case in which a student reported finding what appeared to be a completely unchecked page in a Physical Education answer script.
“One of my friends mentioned that their friend got their P.E. paper checked, but one of the pages went completely unchecked, like as if it wasn’t even there to begin with, missing quite a lot of marks that could have been totalled up,” she said.
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She also pointed to a dynamic that allegedly kept many students from pursuing re-evaluation even when they believed their marks were wrong.
“Many students did not apply for re-evaluation because of the fee involved and the fear of getting their marks reduced even further,” the Chennai student said.
The portal itself, she said, created its own layer of difficulty. She described students reporting that money left their accounts without applications registering, forcing them to attempt the process again.
“As far as I know, some of my classmates complained of money going out of their accounts when trying to pay for their paper to get re-checked, but the website freezes and nothing actually happens, to which they have to try the whole process again,” she said.
When she assessed how CBSE had responded to the volume of student complaints, her summary was curt.
“Hundreds of emails were sent to CBSE. And to this, they just reduced the fees students had to pay to get their papers checked and made the website lag a little less.”
On the fundamental question of what the OSM rollout represented, she did not step back from her conclusion.
“Of course it has caused an uproar. Why would CBSE play with the lives of Class 12 students? Using us as guinea pigs, I would say.”
A third student, also choosing anonymity, said that in her own scanned copies, sections containing question numbers appeared cropped at the edges. Beyond her own experience, she said she saw students online report missing pages, blurry scans, and other issues they believed had gone unaddressed.
“The portal also faced frequent technical issues and often became unresponsive,” she said.
When students in her school raised these concerns, she described how the teachers around her responded.
“The teachers at my school largely defended the system despite the issues being reported,” she said, adding, “There seemed to be an effort to downplay the concerns rather than openly address them.”
The third student noted that login and access failures on the portal added a specific kind of stress on students who were already uncertain about their marks.
“One of the main concerns students faced was login and access issues. These problems affected confidence in the platform and made the process more stressful,” she said.
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She said students who chose to document and share their experiences publicly had performed a service.
“Many students shared screenshots and complaints on social media about portal glitches, scanning errors, and access issues. This helped bring attention to the scale of the problem,” she said.
On whether the issue would receive sustained attention or quietly disappear, she left the question open.
“Whether the issue continues to receive attention will depend on how effectively CBSE addresses the concerns raised by students,” she said.
Yashvi, a student at Sri Sri Ravishankar Vidya Mandir in Bengaluru, said the OSM interface functioned better for evaluators than it did for students.
“I feel it is a net positive for the teachers but an overall negative for students, especially those with worse handwriting,” she said. “It just makes the already harsh system even harsher. I feel like more errors are pretty common given the online nature, with the prints not coming out properly or any other mechanical failure.”
On whether students had been adequately informed or prepared before the system went live, she said the timeline gave them no meaningful opportunity to adjust.
“The announcement was so sudden and so last minute that most students were not able to prep,” she said. “But that is just how CBSE tends to be.”
She connected the OSM rollout to what she described as a wider pattern in how Indian educational institutions approach change.
“I feel like this was a cheap attempt at just faking progress via technology instead of addressing the very real stress that students often experience and making things more comfortable for them,” she said.
On re-evaluation, she argued that the digital system had compounded a problem that pre-dated OSM.
“Grading and re-evaluation in the board has always been bad, and now with the current system it will only make things harder,” she said. “I feel like machine error and human error are never good to have together. The point of evaluation was that it is fair, but now that is up to fate more than anything.”
She said she expected little to change despite the volume of complaints.
“Students are upset but nothing will get done. That is just how the education system here works,” she said. “I know CBSE well enough to know that nothing will ever be fixed.”
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Sri Ramakrishnan said his Economics score disappointed him most. He traced part of the problem to something he described as structural: different schools using different publications rather than a single standardised textbook.
“Many schools do not strictly follow the NCERT textbook. Instead, they use their own publications, and that leads to a lack of uniformity in Economics education,” he said. “The question paper is uniform, but the teaching materials are not.”
He said conversations with friends and peers across his school produced a consistent picture.
“Many of them were shocked. They could not believe they had scored lower than expected. Even some of the school toppers received marks that were much lower than anticipated,” he said.
He said he had heard directly from teachers about what the OSM interface looked like from the evaluator’s side.
“Many teachers have complained about the on-screen marking system. They say that answer scripts are sometimes unclear or blurred on the screen, making evaluation difficult,” he said. “There is a possibility that correct answers could be overlooked, causing students to lose marks.”
On the emotional dimension of the experience, he was measured but unambiguous.
“We work very hard to score well and secure admission to top institutions such as the IITs, IIMs, and other leading colleges,” he said. “If there are issues in the evaluation process and they are not addressed, it becomes very disappointing. I feel let down by the system, the administration, and the authorities responsible for conducting the examinations.”
He said the Education Minister needed to take responsibility and that public trust in the system had sustained damage that administrative adjustments alone would not repair.
Asked what he would say directly to CBSE, he returned to where he had started.
“I would ask them to bring back the old system,” he said. “Students need more consistency and clarity.”
He closed the way he began, with a direct appeal to an institution he felt had stopped listening.
“Marks should reflect the student’s hard work and knowledge, not the speed of the evaluation process.”
(Compiled by Sumit Jha with inputs from Subash Chandra Bose, Aditi Sounderrajan, and Aditi Tamagond)
(Edited by Sumavarsha)
