The online submission of marks of the the first semester exam of ISC (Class XII) had to be stalled midway at several schools because of ‘a technical glitch’ on Tuesday.
Principals of several schools said that the server for entry of marks was ‘down’ since 6.30pm.
Around 8pm, school principals received an email from the council regarding “closure of evaluation due to technical glitch in marks Online Marks Capture system”.
“…Due to a technical glitch, the Online Marks Capture System has become unresponsive. You may close the Centre for Evaluation for today. You shall be informed once the technical issue is resolved,” the email from CISCE says.
On Monday, teachers pored over answer scripts checking them minutely so that there were no mistakes. Many of them reached home late.
Arrangements were made in several schools for tea and snacks as the checking and uploading of marks on campuses went past 9pm.
In at least one school, an annexe was provided with a couch to allow the “supervising examiner to stretch” who was on the campus from noon.
The annexe also provided space for others teachers to freshen up.
The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) on Tuesday sent a circular to heads of schools reviewing the ‘evaluation process’ and making amendments to it.
In the circular the council has asked “invigilators to be used as additional examiners” and “reduce the number of scripts to be evaluated by each examiner at the Evaluation Centre from 35 scripts to 20 scripts each.”
“This is in direct reference to the first day of the ISC Evaluation of the Semester 1 Examination...The CISCE has since received communication through emails and phone calls from Examiners, Teachers, Heads of Schools and Conveners expressing their apprehensions, difficulties, concerns and suggestions regarding the new format and procedure of the Evaluation,” the circular said.
“One examiner was absent on Monday and the answer scripts had to be distributed amongst the rest, which took more time,” said Terence Ireland, principal of St James’ School.
The council stipulated time to complete the checking and uploading was 6.30pm but across schools like Modern High School for Girls, St James’ School, Calcutta Girls’ High School, Julien Day School, Kalyani, MP Birla Foundation Higher Secondary School, The Heritage School, examiners could complete work well past 9pm on Monday.
“Since a new pattern of question paper have been set and it being the first day, examiners took more time to make sure that they did not make any mistakes. But since we are council-affiliated schools and an exercise has been started by it, we should support the council in completing it,” said Terence John, principal of Julien Day School Kalyani.
The checking process had gathered momentum on Tuesday, the second day of the ISC exams because more examiners were engaged to check the answer scripts. However, the “server problem” delayed the whole process because of which uploading could not be done at several schools.
In some schools, uploading of marks of the entire batch was left while in some others only a few answer scripts were left to be uploaded.
The email on Tuesday evening said that the answer scripts should be stored following the procedure for the “short duration storage of Confidential Documents.”
