The Term I examinations conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) are courting problems after each exam. On Monday, December 13, the students of Class XII Commerce stream got a rude shock when they arrived at the examination halls for their Accountancy paper. The Board surprised the students and teachers alike by changing the question paper pattern.
"The pattern was different from the sample question paper," said Prasanth Venpakal, a teacher. And this led to the creation of a lot of confusion and chaos, he added. According to him, the paper was a big blow to the average student.
"Besides being lengthy, a lot of the time got eaten up in understanding the new format," said Prasanth. Another teacher said, as per the sample question paper according to which they had trained the students, "In Part 1, Section A, 15 questions were to be attempted out of 18, while in Section B, 15 out of 18 and 4 out of 5 in Section C. In Part 2, Section A, 5 out of 7 and in Section B 6 out of 7 were to be attempted. Thus a total of 45 questions were to be answered out of 55." But all that got overturned, he added.
On Monday, as per question paper that the students received, Part 1 had 36 questions. Of these, Sections A and B, 14 questions need to be answered, while it was 3 in Section C. That is a total of 31 questions. Questions 37 to 48 came under Part 2. In this part, 4 questions were to be answered in Section A and 5 in Section B. So, in effect only 40 questions needed to be answered out of 48. Also, each question carried one mark.
According to Sreya Warrier, a student, in her school only two students found the paper easy. "All the rest struggled," she said and added, "It took us a lot of time to come to terms with the revised pattern." According to Prasanth, many students, especially those who don't have a base in Mathematics, will surely fail.
According to another teacher, they too found that a change in the question paper pattern at the last minute was confusing for the children. "According to the students, a majority called the paper hard and lengthy. A lot of time was required to do detailed calculations," said the teacher.
It’s a moderate paper for very few high achievers. "Reverse calculation method was also given in few questions, which was very difficult," said a teacher. Another thing pointed out by Prasanth was the fact that the percentage of inclusion of portions wasn't followed strictly. "Nearly majority of the questions came from the chapter on Accounting for Share Capital," he added.
