Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan defends on-screen marking, owns up to glitches

NEW DELHI: Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday defended CBSE’s newly introduced ‘On-Screen Marking (OSM)’ system as a “progressive instrument” aimed at bringing greater transparency and accountability to the evaluation process, even as he took responsibility for glitches in the evaluation mechanism that have left students and parents worried.”I take responsibility. It will be fixed, a solution will be found. We are all working on that task,” Pradhan said after chairing a high-level review meeting at the CBSE headquarters here. He assured students that all genuine grievances would be addressed during the ongoing re-evaluation exercise.His remarks come amid constant attacks from the opposition, and mounting complaints over blurred scanned answer sheets, alleged unchecked responses, payment failures and repeated technical glitches on the CBSE post-result services portal following declaration of class XII board exam results.Pradhan said OSM was being implemented by CBSE for the first time at a massive scale and was intended to make the evaluation process more transparent and student-centric. “Many universities and institutions in India, as well as institutions across the world, are moving towards OSM,” he said.Nearly 18 lakh students appeared for the class XII exam this year, involving around 98 lakh answer sheets and nearly 40 crore scanned pages evaluated digitally under the new system. Around four lakh students have so far accessed nearly 11 lakh scanned answer sheets through the portal, as per the education ministry.Pradhan said the system enables students to directly access scanned copies of their evaluated answer sheets and verify whether any answer or section had been overlooked during marking. “It is student-centric and designed for students, ensuring they receive transparent information about their marks,” he said.He reviewed progress of post-result services with a focus on strengthening student support systems, improving evaluation and monitoring, enhancing the CBSE digital platform and making exam-related services more accessible and efficient.A technical team comprising professors from IIT-Madras and digital systems specialists has been tasked with reviewing portal stability, login management and payment gateway integration to ensure seamless services for students.