From silence to damage control, teachers say the Board ignored early warnings as the On-Screen Marking controversy spiralled into a national crisisNEW DELHI: For weeks now, India’s largest school board has been firefighting one controversy after another. Blurred answer sheets. Missing supplementary pages. Students claiming they received somebody else’s scanned copies. Allegations of technical loopholes. Angry parents. Viral social media posts. Political attacks. Supreme Court petitions.But behind the public outrage around the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE’s) new On-Screen Marking (OSM) system lies another story that has remained largely buried beneath the noise — the story of teachers who say they saw the problems coming but were too afraid to speak.Long before students began posting screenshots online and demanding answers, evaluators inside Delhi’s OSM centres claim they were already struggling with technical failures, incomplete answer sheets, blurry scans, disappearing pages and server instability during the Class 12 evaluation process.Yet, according to multiple teachers and principals who spoke on condition of anonymity, many evaluators chose to remain silent after CBSE issued a March 16 circular warning teachers against “sharing misleading information” on social media regarding the evaluation process.What CBSE officially described as an advisory against rumours is now being described by many evaluators as something else entirely: a gag order.And now, several educators allege, the same system that discouraged criticism during evaluation is quietly encouraging schools and teachers to publicly defend the OSM process online as the controversy deepens.The result is a growing sense of anger within sections of the school ecosystem itself.“We were gagged first. Now suddenly there is pressure to speak positively about OSM and reassure everyone,” said a senior Delhi-based Class 12 evaluator. “The irony is painful.”“Everybody knew this was heading towards disaster”The March 16 CBSE circular had warned evaluators against posting “comments, opinions and experiences” on social media, saying misleading posts could create confusion among stakeholders.The Board reminded teachers that the evaluation process was confidential and that any attempt to “spread rumours or misrepresent facts” could invite disciplinary action.Officially, the circular was about maintaining professional conduct. But several teachers now say the message received at evaluation centres was much broader: do not publicly question the system.“One thing became very clear after the circular — nobody wanted trouble,” said a Physics evaluator from Delhi who worked on the digital assessment process. “People feared show-cause notices, blacklisting from future evaluation duties, or unnecessary scrutiny. So even when genuine technical problems started happening, most teachers simply kept quiet.”Another evaluator said many teachers had already sensed that the transition to OSM was being rushed.“The training itself lasted barely a week. Some teachers got maybe eight or ten days maximum. You cannot suddenly shift lakhs of answer sheets to a completely digital evaluation system and expect zero confusion,” the teacher said.According to evaluators, the issues began surfacing almost immediately after digital checking started.“We faced blurry scans constantly. Sometimes supplementary sheets simply would not load. Sometimes the next page would suddenly disappear while checking step marking,” another Delhi evaluator said. “There were instances where formulas looked distorted on screen. Teachers had to interpret what the student had written.”A Mathematics examiner described the experience as “mentally exhausting”.“You are trying to check lengthy subjective answers on a screen under strict timelines. Suddenly the page jumps. Then the server hangs. Then the image becomes unclear. And throughout this, the in-charge keeps reminding you to strictly follow marking guidelines because copies may later enter the public domain.”According to teachers, evaluators were repeatedly warned that if discrepancies were later found during re-evaluation or public scrutiny, action could be initiated against them.“There was fear throughout the process,” the examiner said. “We were being told: stick exactly to the marking scheme, be careful, these copies may become public later. But how do you check properly when the answer itself is not visible clearly?”“Had teachers spoken freely earlier, this crisis may not have exploded”Several evaluators now believe the controversy could have been contained in its early stages if teachers had been able to openly flag operational issues without fear of consequences.“Honestly, most evaluators already knew the results would create controversy,” said another senior examiner from Delhi. “The moment we saw blurry scans and missing supplementary sheets during checking, we understood students would later complain.”The teacher added that evaluators informally discussed these concerns among themselves but rarely escalated them aggressively.“The atmosphere was such that nobody wanted to officially challenge the system,” the teacher said. “If teachers had openly raised these issues in March itself, perhaps CBSE would have either paused OSM temporarily, fixed the technical loopholes, or shifted some subjects back to offline checking.”Instead, the problems quietly travelled through the system until they surfaced publicly after results were declared.That public eruption became impossible to contain once students began accessing scanned answer sheets during re-evaluation.The controversy intensified sharply after several students alleged that their scanned answer books were blurred, incomplete or mismatched. One student’s claim that a Physics answer sheet uploaded under his roll number did not belong to him triggered national outrage and forced CBSE to later acknowledge that the “correct copy” had subsequently been sent.But for many evaluators, the crisis was never sudden.“It did not begin after results,” one examiner said bluntly. “It began during evaluation itself.”“Now the messaging matters more than the mistakes”What has further angered many educators is the growing perception that schools are now being informally encouraged to defend the OSM system publicly.Several principals across Delhi confirmed that there have been conversations within institutional groups encouraging positive messaging around the digital evaluation process.One principal from a prominent private school in Delhi said schools found themselves caught between anxious parents and institutional expectations.“Parents are asking difficult questions every day,” the principal said. “At the same time, there is an expectation that schools should help calm the atmosphere and reassure people that the system is functioning properly.”Another principal described the situation as “deeply uncomfortable”. “You cannot ask schools to become perception managers when genuine student grievances exist,” the principal said. “Students are emotionally distressed. Some genuinely feel their performance has not been reflected accurately. In such a situation, transparency becomes more important than image management.”Some educators say the contradiction has become impossible to ignore. “First teachers were told not to discuss problems publicly,” a Delhi-based senior teacher said. “Now schools are being nudged to post positive messaging about OSM. Naturally people will ask — is the priority solving the problem or controlling the narrative?”And even as criticism grew, a new layer of discomfort began emerging within schools.From evaluation halls to Instagram reels: The sudden push to “trust the system”At the same time, the controversy has acquired a second layer altogether. Multiple principals and teachers across Delhi schools alleged that, amid growing criticism of OSM, they were informally encouraged by CBSE-linked channels to publicly defend the system and “spread awareness” about its positives. While no formal written circular was issued for this, educators claimed that conversations through WhatsApp groups, calls and internal coordination meetings increasingly carried the message that schools should help “calm the narrative” around OSM rather than amplify criticism. “We were told to reassure students and parents that the system is transparent and student-friendly,” alleged a principal of a private school in East Delhi on condition of anonymity. “The concern inside schools was very different from the confidence being projected outside.”Interestingly, some school heads and educators did publicly endorse the digital evaluation system during the peak of the controversy. Dr. Jyoti Gupta, Director Principal of K.R. Mangalam World School, GK-II, appeared in a video message discussing CBSE’s new examination patterns and the digital reforms around evaluation, while Mrs Moushumi Das, Principal of SDSM School for Excellence, Jamshedpur, also shared a video speaking about the system.“Technology without preparation becomes another form of unfairness”The OSM crisis has also reopened deeper concerns about how educational reforms are being implemented across India’s examination system.CBSE introduced the On-Screen Marking model this year as part of its push towards faster, digitised and supposedly more transparent evaluation.The Board has defended the process, stating that lakhs of students have successfully accessed scanned answer sheets and that all genuine grievances are being addressed.But teachers say the real issue is not whether technology should be introduced. It is whether such a large-scale transition was operationally ready. “Technology is not the enemy,” said a senior Commerce evaluator. “Poor implementation is.”Several evaluators argued that digital evaluation demands far more extensive preparation than what was actually provided. “Screen-based checking is fundamentally different from physical copy checking,” one teacher said. “It requires proper infrastructure, strong servers, image clarity standards, examiner calibration and much longer training. Instead, this transition felt rushed.”Another evaluator added that older teachers particularly struggled to adapt quickly to prolonged digital assessment interfaces. “Many teachers were trying their best but were still figuring out the platform while simultaneously checking board papers carrying students’ futures,” the evaluator said.The controversy has now evolved far beyond technical glitches. For students, it has become a question of trust.For teachers, it has become a question of whether institutional systems genuinely listen to problems before they become public embarrassments.And for CBSE, the larger damage may not come from one blurred answer sheet or one mismatched copy, but from the growing perception that warnings were ignored until the crisis became impossible to deny.Because in India’s exam ecosystem, trust is everything. And once teachers begin saying they were afraid to speak, restoring that trust becomes far more difficult than fixing software.Politics enters the OSM storm as Pradhan takes responsibilityThe controversy also spilled into the political arena after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi accused the Centre of remaining silent over the growing complaints around CBSE’s On-Screen Marking system and questioned the awarding of the digital evaluation contract. In a post on X, Rahul Gandhi alleged that the company handling the system had faced controversy in the past and demanded accountability over the alleged irregularities affecting lakhs of students.Responding to the criticism on Thursday, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan accused Gandhi of attempting to politicise the issue and said the Congress leader “does not stand with India’s scientific progress”. Speaking to reporters, Pradhan said, “Rahul Gandhi seems frustrated due to continuous electoral defeats… This is not the time for politics.” PTI reported that the minister also assured that no one would be spared if any irregularities were found in the system.At the same time, Pradhan made perhaps the government’s strongest acknowledgment yet of the seriousness of the controversy by publicly accepting responsibility for the inconvenience caused to students. “I myself take responsibility on behalf of the government for any inconvenience,” Pradhan said on Thursday, while urging that students should not face additional mental stress because of the controversy. He added that the focus now should remain on resolving student grievances rather than escalating panic around the issue.The minister also stated that nearly 4 lakh students had already accessed scanned answer sheets under the new digital system and assured that every complaint would be examined. However, for many students, teachers and parents already questioning the credibility of OSM, the statement appeared less like closure and more like confirmation that the crisis had become too large for the system to ignore.
