CBSE results within a week in future!

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is moving towards digitalization of the paper evaluation system. This will ultimately prepare it to declare results within a week of the exams getting over. The changes will be applicable only to XII exams and will be partially implemented in the current academic session (2011-12).

Under the proposed system, answer sheets will be digitalized by scanning and uploading to a specialized software. The digital answer sheets will be then stored on a secure server and can be accessed by the evaluator alone. The evaluator will then mark the answer sheets online and submit it back to the server. The total marks will be tabulated automatically, leaving the evaluator more time for other answer sheets.

CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi confirmed the development to TOI. He said “We are actively considering this. Digitalization will be beneficial to the Board in many ways. I cannot go into a lot of details now but I can confirm we will partially implement it for board exams to be held in 2012. We will digitalize only certain papers (subjects) and that too in certain regions that we will disclose later. After looking at the results we will decide when to implement it fully.” Joshi also confirmed that it would be only for XII exams.

TOI has learnt that a leading Bangalore-based skill assessment company is helping CBSE carry out the pilot project. The system CBSE is implementing is called ‘On-Screen Marking’ (OSM) that could be customized according the needs of different boards and universities.

Once the handwritten answer sheets have been submitted by the students, they will be scanned and digitally encrypted using customized OSM software. The encrypted image can either be stored at a secure server of the contracted company or a server belonging to the board. The evaluators can then log on to the intranet (closed group) and can access the answer sheets using passwords. They can mark the answer sheets online and the software will tabulate the marks scored automatically. This would speed up preparing of final marksheets.

A highly-placed CBSE official told TOI on condition of anonymity “At present, a lot of time is used up in collecting papers from school, getting them to evaluators, calculating total marks for each and collating everything centrally. With the software, once the evaluator has checked the answer sheet and submitted it to the server, everything thing will be instantaneous. The all-India marks, gender-wise performance, region-wise performance etc will all be done automatically. This will save a lot of time which will hopefully help us declare results within a maximum of ten days if not a week of end of the exams.”

Deven Dasture, director, Royal Gondwana Public School said, “This is an amazing step being taken by the CBSE and will help enormously.”
Source : Times of India