New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has announced a revised fee structure for its re-evaluation process, significantly reducing the charges for students seeking verification and review of their board examination answer scripts. The move comes amid growing concerns raised by students and parents over the Online Scoring Mechanism (OSM) used during this year’s evaluation process.
The announcement was made during a press conference addressed by Sanjay Kumar on Sunday. Officials said the revised fee structure has been introduced to ease anxiety among students and make the re-evaluation process more accessible and transparent.
Revised CBSE re-evaluation fee structure announced
Under the new structure, students will now have to pay Rs 100 to obtain scanned copies of their answer scripts. Verification of marks will also cost Rs 100, while correction requests will be charged at Rs 25 per question.
The revised charges are substantially lower compared to previous years and are aimed at reducing the financial burden on students seeking clarification regarding their marks.
The updated fee structure includes:
- Rs 100 for scanned copies of answer sheets
- Rs 100 for verification of marks
- Rs 25 per question for correction requests
Officials further announced that if a student’s marks increase after verification or correction, the re-evaluation fee collected from the student will be refunded.
Concerns over Online Scoring Mechanism
The decision comes amid criticism and confusion surrounding the implementation of the Online Scoring Mechanism in the CBSE board examination evaluation process this year.
Addressing the concerns, Kumar said the ministry organised the press conference specifically to “clear the anxiety among students regarding OSM.”
He defended the digital evaluation system, stating that the concept was first planned in 2014 and has now been implemented after years of preparation and testing.
According to officials, nearly 98 lakh answer scripts were scanned, converted into PDF documents and digitally distributed to evaluators across the country.
Kumar said a three-level security system was used during the scanning process to ensure that no answer sheet pages were missed and all documents remained properly visible and legible.
Digital evaluation improves transparency, says CBSE
The Education Ministry maintained that the digital marking system improves transparency and accuracy in the evaluation process.
Kumar explained that the Online Scoring Mechanism eliminates manual totalling mistakes and ensures that evaluators follow standardised marking schemes.
“When there is an online digital system, the marking schema also gets decided. This ensures zero totalling errors,” Kumar said during the briefing.
He further noted that several major institutions already use similar systems, including the University of Mumbai, University of Delhi, Chartered Accountancy examinations and International Baccalaureate boards.
Officials added that evaluator training for the new system had started in April last year using previous years’ question papers to familiarise teachers with the digital evaluation process.
Thousands of scripts evaluated physically
Despite the large-scale digital rollout, officials admitted that more than 13,000 answer scripts could not be scanned successfully due to issues such as poor handwriting visibility and ink-related problems.
In such cases, physical evaluation methods were used instead to avoid inconvenience to students.
“The welfare and concern of all our children is of utmost importance to us,” Kumar said, reiterating that CBSE continues to maintain provisions for verification, review and re-evaluation to ensure fairness in results.
Prachi Pandey was also present during the press conference.
The revised fee structure is expected to provide relief to lakhs of students and parents while also addressing concerns regarding transparency and accessibility in the board evaluation process.