Bengaluru parents flag issues in National Institute of Open Schooling question papers, allege poor response from board

Bengaluru: Parents of children who wrote their senior secondary school exam under the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) have flagged several issues with the question papers, leading to confusion among students. Despite reaching out to NIOS through emails, parents say they have not received a prompt response on the next course of action.

Parents told TOI that the question papers were printed at the centres instead of being delivered in sealed packets. They alleged this was a breach of confidentiality and protocol.

The accountancy question paper accessed by the parents shows several inaccuracies. Though there is a mention of Sections A and B, there is no demarcation between the sections. This led to confusion in the format of the paper. The total number of questions is 55, even as the initial instructions on the paper mentioned 47 as the total number.

"NIOS is taken by a wide range of learners - homeschoolers, those who are preparing for competitive exams and those who cannot attend regular school. Many learners were overwhelmed by this goof - up," Sandhya Viswan, a homeschooling parent, who runs the Bangalore Schools group, said. "Parents from Coimbatore, Chennai and Kochi have also expressed similar concerns, making this a probable regionwide issue," she added. The biology paper from Pune and the accountancy paper from Uttarakhand accessed by parents were significantly different from the ones in Bengaluru.

Parents also flagged issues with the biology paper. "Some questions were repeated, the diagrams were unclear, and there were errors in the multiple-choice questions. My son is enrolled in gifted programmes such as Johns Hopkins Centre for Talented Youth, USA. We have chosen NIOS homeschooling here because of the great flexibility it offers. It would be great to see some improvements in their processes," a parent said.

NIOS regional director V Swaminathan said he had not gone through the papers and passed the blame on to the head office. "All papers are prepared by the headquarters and sent to us. We have no role in formatting the papers locally. Only two to three parents have complained so far," he said, emphasising that he was not an academician but an administrator.


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