Students given wrongState Board question paper

  Source: The Hindu P. Sudhakar

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State Board question paper given to ten matriculation students and vice versa
District Educational Officer rushes to centre for an enquiry, says no student would be affected

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TIRUNELVELI: The fate of ten matriculation students and as many 10th standard students remains unknown as they were given the ‘wrong question paper' owing to the carelessness of the invigilator in an examination centre at Palayamkottai when the Secondary School Leaving Certificate examination commenced on Tuesday.

Apart from accommodating its 895 SSLC students, Sarah Tucker Girls' Higher Secondary School, Palayamkottai, is the examination centre for 63 students of CSI Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Palayamkottai, and 40 SSLC students of Government Higher Secondary School, Tharuvai near Palayamkottai.

The invigilator, wrongly distributed the State Board question paper (Code Number 5401) to ten matriculation students and the question papers framed under matriculation stream (Code Number 5301) to similar number of State Board students.

When a couple of students took up the matter with the invigilator immediately after going through the question paper, she ignored the appeal and instead, reportedly asked the students to write the examination.

Since the Government of Tamil Nadu supplies Tamil textbooks with same content to the SSLC and the matriculation students, there was no major problem for the pupils, who somehow completed the examination.
When they came out of the examination hall, they came to know that ‘wrong question paper' had been given to them due to the invigilator's negligence, triggering a huge hue and cry among the students.

“We immediately informed the Chief Educational Officer and the Joint Director of School Education (Examinations), Chennai, about this issue. We've been asked to send these 20 answer scripts separately for taking appropriate remedial measure,” said Headmistress of Sarah Tucker Girls' Higher Secondary School.
An explanation in writing was obtained from the invigilator.

The Headmistress also complained that more than 20 invigilators had not turned up for their duty when the examination started at 10 a.m. “Our teachers supervised these examination halls till the invigilators arrived at the hall,” she said.

District Educational Officer C. Kolappa Pillai, who rushed to the school for an enquiry, told ‘The Hindu' that no student would be affected due to this faux pas. “When similar mistake occurred two years ago, appropriate remedial measure was taken,” he noted.

Later in the evening, the DEO informed that the invigilator and the Headmistress of the examination centre had been asked not to come for the ongoing SSLC examination invigilation anymore.