Two government school teachers got the axe and a printing press will be penalised after an error-ridden question paper in the class X half-yearly English exam left education officials in Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) red-faced. A passage on Prime Minister Narendra Modi read: "As a spoker he is known as a croad-puller. He is the most sovy political leader of India."
The errors were made by both the teachers who prepared and reviewed the paper and the printing press, Ratan Singh Yadav, Jaipur district education officer, said.
"One of the teachers, Ritu Srivastava, prepared the question paper and another teacher, Sarita Yadav, moderated it but the errors were there in the paper on Monday," he said. Yadav said nearly 15-16 errors were made by the teachers and the printing press was responsible for 12-13 inaccuracies.
"All errors were related to spellings. There was no factual or conceptual error in the paper," the officer said. Yadav said the two teachers were suspended with immediate effect after the matter came to light and a decision to penalise the printing press was taken.
Papers for half-yearly exams are prepared at the district level. "The paper was distributed in all government and private schools in Jaipur affiliated to the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education, Ajmer," he said.
There are more than 2 lakh students in about 35,000 government and private schools in Jaipur which are affiliated to the RBSE. This, however, highlights the plight of Indian educators across the country who either are not equipped with or are ignorant of a basic third language. Reports have shown that among rural and even in some urban areas, teachers are yet to be well versed in the English language. With Hindi and other regional languages fighting to overtake, this seems like one among many such 'sovy' errors to come.
