Erroneous English board examination question paper leave Nepal students confused

Thousands of students appearing in Nepal's Secondary Education Examination (SEE) were confused when they found the question paper for English full of errors. The mistakes on Sunday ranged from spelling errors to incomplete sentences, deciphering some of which depended solely on the examinees' guesswork, reports The Kathmandu Post.

But many students simply did not answer because they did not understand the question. Officials of the National Examination Board, the body responsible for holding the exam throughout the country, dismissed the mistakes as "human error".

"When experts pointed out the errors, we had informed all exam centres and told them to correct the questions for students," said Chandra Mani Paudel, the Board chairman. "They are just typos and result of human error," said Paudel, adding that "Despite our efforts to prevent the mistakes, they just happened."

But teachers told The Kathmandu Post that they never received any instructions to that effect.

"We did not receive any message from the Board. Without any instruction from the Board, we are not allowed to make any changes in the question papers. There was no question about instructing students," a principal of a school here said.