CBSE’s new leak-proof system gives headaches to school administrations

After the entire country has been shocked by the CBSE paper leaks, tomorrow is the first day of reexaminations and apparently CBSE has chalked out a new strategy to ensure that no further leak takes place. According to sources, as per the new system, no hard copy of the question paper will be provided at centres. Rather, every examination centre or school has to download the question paper at the centre, take prinouts at the centre and distribute it to students. Usually, the students are a tense lot on examination day but this new system is giving sleepless nights to the CBSE officials as well as school administrations.

The school administrations are finding it very difficult to make last minute arrangements to implement it all. All schools should have printers, computers, Internet connections and enough paper to print the question paper. According to instructions from CBSE, no one will be allowed to carry mobile phones inside the examination centre except the superintendent. The room in which the computers and printers are to be kept should have CCTV surveillance. The superintendent will receive a call from CBSE to download the paper and then, the process will begin.

Tomorrow, 12th standard examinees will write their Hindi, Kashmiri and Gujarati papers whereas the 10th standard students will take their French, Sanskrit or Urdu examinations. For the last two days, Saturday and Sunday, the school administrations have been busy making all arrangements. In some schools, computers were not in working conditions and in some, printers were not functioning. In most schools, CCTVs were not there. The requisite number of A4 sheets were also brought in. Generators were checked and arranged for so that power cuts don’t jeopardise the examination process.

Despite all these arrangements, the school administrations have kept their fingers crossed and are praying that everything goes smoothly. Experts are of the view that any new experiment while the exams are already half way is very risky. They feel that this is rather an admission by CBSE that they are not capable of checking the leak. They also ask that if at any centre, things go wrong, then who will be the responsible authority? They say again there will be a blame game between schools and CBSE. Some experts also said they were apprehensive of hacking and slow servers.

It is still not clear whether this formula will be implemented only in Delhi or if it will apply to other states too.