CBSE question paper controversies: What all went wrong?

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) got itself involved in a series of controversies during the ongoing Term 1 board exams. In order to tackle the controversies, the Council has come forward, expressed their due apologies and has even stated that they are soon going to set up “an expert committee to thoroughly review and strengthen the question paper setting process”. 

This was the result of back-to-back complaints against the board across social media following the errors, misinformation and offences that featured in both Class X and XII question papers. At least three mistakes and more issues have been highlighted as part of the ongoing Semester 1 CBSE board exams.  Here is a quick round-up of all the controversies and the reasons provoking such outrages.  

Class X English question paper controversy 
The Class X English question paper featured a comprehension passage that promoted ‘gender stereotype’ and was reportedly, derogatory towards women. Although the Council has expressed their regret regarding this issue, and even dropped the passage, promising full marks to all accompanying questions, the controversy is still far from being silent.  

The passage was considered as sexist and misogynistic and echoed a regressive societal structure. Broadly speaking, the passage allegedly suggests that children no longer obey their parents as their mothers no longer obey their fathers. The passage therefore seemed to portray the idea that a modern-day household where both parents share equal earning and family duties do not serve our society perfectly. This is how it reinforces the idea of gender inequality and bias. This controversy has also brought to the limelight the fact that our society needs to go a long way for promoting sensitivity towards issues surrounding gender, sexuality and equality.    

Class XII board exam question paper controversies 
Much before the Class X English question paper controversy, CBSE was criticised for its Class XII Sociology paper which contained a question that read like this: “The unprecedented scale and spread of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 took place under which government?” This was tagged as a hit on India’s communal diversity. However, CBSE was prompt enough to tag it as an “error.” Moreover, the paper also contained several grammatical mistakes. Additionally, it had questions missing in the multiple-choice section and only featured options. The choice of prose was also misleading and was hard to interpret.  

Furthermore, the Maths paper of Class XII was claimed as tough and lengthy by majority of students and had allegedly featured out-of-the syllabus questions. The Physics paper was also called as ‘tricky’ by many and had more numerical questions than anticipated.