According to a report by India Today, the Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education (HPBOSE) has acknowledged a major administrative error that resulted in thousands of Class 12 students receiving incorrect English paper evaluations. The board has now committed to re-checking all affected answer sheets using the correct answer key.
The controversy erupted immediately after Saturday's (May 17) result declaration, when students across the state discovered unexpectedly poor English scores that didn't match their performance expectations. The flood of complaints that followed prompted education authorities to launch an investigation.
Not the first mishap
This wasn't the first mishap surrounding the English paper. The examination itself had been postponed from its original March 8 date to March 29 following an administrative mix-up in Chamba district, where school staff accidentally distributed Class 12 English papers instead of Class 10 papers a day before the scheduled exam.
The situation escalated when both the Himachal Pradesh Government Teachers Union and private school associations voiced their concerns about the suspicious result patterns. Their pressure led Education Minister Rohit Thakur to order a comprehensive review of the evaluation process.
Board Secretary Vishal Sharma confirmed that investigators discovered the wrong answer key had been uploaded to the evaluation system, resulting in widespread incorrect marking across student papers.
A relief
In a move that should comfort anxious students and parents, HPBOSE has announced that the re-evaluation will only benefit students. Those who received lower-than-expected scores will have their papers re-checked, and crucially, the revised results can only show improved marks, never reduced ones.
The board expects to release the corrected results shortly, bringing relief to students who had been left wondering about their academic futures due to the administrative error. Students are advised to monitor the official HPBOSE website for announcements of updated results.