ICSE Students Can Now Get Their Papers Re-Evaluated

With the Council for Indian School certificate examinations (CISCE) brought under the purview of the RTI Act, students can now apply for re-evaluation of their answer scripts and also get a copy of them.

The decision was made following the turning down of an appellant’s request for copies of his son’s ICSE exam answer sheets. CISCE norms only allowed for the verification of marks of the answer scripts at a fee of Rs 4000 for all papers and not re-evaluation, that is, correcting the papers all over again.

The Central Information Commission’s (CIC) order said: “An examining body like CISCE might have an intellectual property right over the question paper, but they do not have any such right over answer sheets of students.” “Without sharing evaluated answer sheets, the board cannot assure justice to students who, at times, might be victims of unreasonable evaluation. It is not proper on the part of this prestigious council to leave students remedy-less in such situations of injustice,” the order further said.

The order comes following two other high court judgements which held that CISCE was not a public authority. The CIC stated in its order that the issue was  of the accountability of CISCE and not whether it is a public authority.  “While every university and educational institution provides for access, rechecking or recounting and re-evaluation of evaluated answer sheets, denying them is inequality and not in tune with the judgment of Hon’ble Supreme Court and also contrary to principles of transparency and accountability as envisaged under RTI Act,” noted the CIC order.

The decision comes as a boon to students who are skeptical of the marks they score and desirous of a re-evaluation. Indeed the CIC order will render more transparency to the evaluation process.