The rollout of On-Screen Marking (OSM), a digital system for managing and marking CBSE answer scripts, was well-intentioned. For teachers, it promised to eliminate common marking and totaling mistakes. For students, it aimed to introduce transparency through time-stamped scripts stored on secure servers. However, the implementation proved highly controversial.
What Went Wrong?
OSM was announced just a week before exams, giving examiners no time to familiarize themselves with the system. This led to widespread result discrepancies, website crashes, and severe data privacy concerns. Evaluation errors, system vulnerabilities, and backlash over data privacy escalated into a national crisis. Students questioned the appointment of COEMPT Eduteck, which had been involved in previous evaluation controversies in other states.
What Is OSM?
OSM stands for CBSE's On-Screen Marking, introduced for Class 12 in 2023. It replaces paper checks with digital evaluation. The workflow involves collecting answer sheets from exam centers, transporting them to Regional Offices, and digitizing each script through spine-preserving scanning. After quality checks, scripts are anonymized and uploaded to a protected portal. Evaluators log in via CBSE's OASIS database and mark answers using a standardized scheme. The software enforces stepwise marking and auto-total scores. Head examiners perform random audits, and once marking is complete, digital marks are compiled into results. Every action is recorded with user identity and timestamp, and scripts are locked to prevent tampering.
Problem Areas
Blurred Scans and Mismatches: CBSE scanned about 40 crore pages, with only 30,000 problematic pages (0.01%). Issues included blurred or unreadable pages, cropped answers, missing pages, supplementary sheets not appearing, and answer-sheet mix-ups.
Teachers' Issues: Evaluators faced problems with faint handwriting, unclear diagrams, screen fatigue, portal glitches, and page-loading issues.
Marking and Score Compilation: The OSM platform auto-calculates totals and prevents skipping questions. However, students alleged that correct MCQ responses received lower marks, certain answers appeared unchecked, and marks awarded did not match visible evaluation. CBSE has not released any technical audit report identifying a system-wide cause.
What CBSE Did
Blurred Scans: About 68,018 scripts (out of 98 lakh) were re-scanned; 13,583 needed manual evaluation after repeated failures. The board stated that if ambiguity was found, the script was rescanned.
Data Security and Cyberattacks: CBSE moved all scanned data onto its own secure servers and instituted strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with penalties of Rs 1 lakh for every 15 minutes of downtime. Examiner sessions are monitored through video surveillance.
Student Complaints: Over 4 lakh students (23% of examinees) applied for scanned copies of answer scripts. CBSE processed around 6.3 lakh re-evaluation requests.
OSM's Earliest Adopters
CBSE first piloted OSM in 2014 for Class 10, but not for all subjects. However, OSM was implemented two years earlier by Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) in Belgaum, Karnataka. VTU used it for first to fourth semesters of all UG courses, covering roughly 20 lakh answer scripts of 3 lakh students across 193 colleges. OSM first took root in large technical and health-science universities with heavy answer-script volumes and pressure to release results on time. Universities such as VTU, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, IK Gujral Punjab Technical University, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University, and Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University are among others using OSM.
