Several students who have appeared for IPE 2019 were shocked to find that they had been marked absent either for first and second language examinations even when they had appeared for it. Being compulsory subjects, students who are absent in these two subjects will be failed in the examination.
Some students have also complained that the grand total of marks printed on the memo did not add up to the individual score obtained in each subject. College associations and parents have flayed the TSBIE for making such lapses, particularly when students are so vulnerable to suicides over failed results. Barely hours after the results were announced on Thursday, two students from the city have committed suicide after they failed to clear the examination.
While the Board has a provision for recounting and re-verification of the answer scripts in lieu of a fee, making students absent when they actually appeared for the examination, is callousness on part of the Board, they alleged. In addition, this year the memo has a new vocabulary which has further become a cause of confusion. Until last year absent was marked as AA in the memo but this year's memos have 'AF' for students who were marked absent for the first language and 'AP' for absentees of the second language. "Such abbreviations are being used for the first time. There is no clarity on what they mean. If the Board was not ready to release the results they should have taken a few more days rather than doing a shoddy job. By marking students who wrote the exam absent for the compulsory subjects, so many students have failed," said P Madhusudhan Reddy, president of Government Intermediate Colleges Association.
Others like G Satish, honorary president, Telangana Private Junior Colleges, put the onus on the software being used by the third-party contractor which is handling technical services of the Board — right from admission related, examination fee, issuance to hall tickets to making the memos and uploading the results — for the goofup. It was only in 2018-19 academic year that this responsibility was taken from Centre for Good Governance (CGG) and given to a private player. Since then there has been a huge hue and cry about it particularly when discrepancies cropped up in the examination fee details. "There is no denying that there is a lapse on part of the Board for not seeing the error before releasing the result but the error is made by the software and not manmade. This is the first time we have seen such an issue. But Board should have been able to detect the error particularly knowing how sensitive students nowadays are about examinations, he said and added that 1-2 per cent of the students would be affected," said Satish.
While admitting that some students marksheets erroneously show absent even though they wrote the exam a higher official from the Board said that it was the problem was mostly in Medchal district and only a few cases have been reported. Speaking about the error, he said it was caused by the carelessness of college management who did not send a proper number from the blank barcode sheet. "If the college to which the student belongs or the invigilating staff makes any error in sending these codes to us, the system does not read them properly. This is what happened, some students who were present, due to faulty bar code were interpreted at absent by the system," he said. The Board also issued a statement on Friday stating that all errors will be rectified and that no student would be put to disadvantage.
