New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to revolutionise the examination system. The board for the first time will have a section of its Class XII answer scripts examined through the onscreen marking system or OMS- a practice used in many foreign countries.
OMS is considered to be better than the usual manual checking as it improves the accuracy and efficiency of the marking system and does not leave a scope of any answer remaining unchecked. In OMS, answer scripts are scanned and the images are uploaded on a server, which then enables an examiner to evaluate the booklet on the computer with the help of specially developed software.
Initially OMS will be used for the English paper of the Delhi class 12th students. Around 80,000 students from Delhi will be undertaking their English test this year. If the system is proved to be successful then the system will be implemented for other subjects and students from other states as well.
For the successful evaluation of the system, CBSE has specially designed answer booklets for the Delhi students. Each special booklet has a unique serial number and 24 pages, all of which are numbered. Further each answer has a designated space and the students will have to write within that space.
The decision to use the system has been taken after a pilot project that was initiated last year. Last year some 200 answer sheets were evaluated with OMS and manually. The examiners themselves observed the difference while using the OMS, therefore CBSE has decided to extend this to a larger number of students this year.
