Days after the CBSE Class 12 board exam results were declared, concerns over the board’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system have sparked a wide-ranging debate over transparency, reliability and the emotional tool of the high-stakes exams.While the Ministry of Education has defended the digital evaluation process, students and parents on social media have continued to complain about allegedly blurry scans, unexpectedly low marks, and difficulties in the re-evaluation process. Growing dissatisfaction has exposed the delicate relationship between technology-based reforms and student confidence in India’s examination system.At the heart of the controversy is the OSM system whereby answer sheets were scanned into PDF copies and checked digitally instead of being checked physically by teachers.
The ministry says that OSM is not new.
Addressing a press conference on Sunday, School Education and Literacy Department Secretary Sanjay Kumar said that this system is not being introduced for the first time.According to Kumar, CBSE initially introduced on-screen marking in 2014, though it could not continue due to limitations in technological infrastructure. He said that the system was successfully implemented for the Class 12 board exams this year.“Some students feel that they should have scored more marks than they actually did. I would like to emphasize that on-screen marking is neither a new concept nor is it being implemented for the first time,” Kumar said at the press conference.He said that answer sheets of around 98 lakh students were scanned during the examination process. The ministry also maintained that three levels of security checks were carried out to ensure accuracy and reliability.Kumar further argued that a major advantage of digital assessment was the elimination of human errors in total scores, a problem often encountered during manual assessment.
Concerns over blurry scans and readability
Even as officials defended the system, many students alleged that the problem was not the totals but whether the answers were being seen correctly by the first evaluators.Several posts circulating on X questioned the quality of the scanning and whether examinees were able to clearly read the handwritten answers.An X user, identified as Pixel Tech Lab, claimed, “This is the kind of scanning done by CBSE in the name of OSM,” while sharing screenshots purportedly showing the answer sheet scan being blurred.Another user, posting as “…” (@sohi66636), described the system as “a scanning lottery”, and alleged that the blurred scans hid correctly written answers and led to unfair deduction of marks despite the students’ efforts.Vivek Chandrajeet Sharma (@ChandraJee36211) urged authorities to scrap the OSM process and re-evaluate manually, citing alleged discrepancies in scanning.These concerns resonate widely as board exams continue to carry a heavy academic and emotional weight for students. For many, these marks influence college admissions, scholarships, and future career paths. A social media post that gained attention read by Adv. Says Supra: “Our future is not a game.”
The ministry admitted that 13,000 answer sheets were facing scanning problems.
Interestingly, the ministry itself admitted that some of the answer sheets could not be scanned properly. According to Kumar, despite repeated scanning efforts, around 13,000 answer sheets were found to be partly illegible because the students had used too light colored ink.“Finally, it also turned out that eventually, we had about 13,000 such answer sheets, which we found that no matter how many times we scanned them, there was something wrong with them because the ink used was too light in color,” he said at a press conference.Later these answer sheets were manually checked by the teachers and the marks were uploaded in the system, officials said.For many students, however, this has raised concerns about whether similar problems have been detected in other copies.
Students talk about stress, trauma and loss of confidence.
The controversy has also highlighted the emotional distress students face when exam results do not match their expectations.A widely shared post by X-user Anurag Tyagi ( @TheAnuragTyagi ) described the issue as a “system failure,” blaming issues ranging from portal crashes to inadequate teacher preparation.“A child reads all year 1… but a poorly planned system can destroy confidence in a single day,” the post read.Another user, Iftikhar Hussain ( @Iftikharhu13223 ), questioned how examiners can accurately predict answers if the scans appear blurry.The growing online backlash reflects deep concern among students, not just about marks, but whether the testing process is transparent enough to affect self-esteem.Education experts have long argued that while digital systems can improve efficiency and reduce scholarly errors, their credibility ultimately depends on consistent implementation, technical reliability, and clear communication with students.
A bigger debate than technology
As the debate around CBSE’s on-screen marking continues, what emerges is not just the push for digital assessment but also the uneasiness among students who feel their efforts are mired in technical glitches. Although technology is important and indispensable in education, its success depends on how well it is implemented at the ground level. Teachers need to be properly trained, systems must be thoroughly tested, and the infrastructure must be reliable before scaling up such changes. Most importantly, when students’ futures are at stake, there is little room for hasty or half-baked transitions.
