Chennai: 2/75? Fraud in exam, cries schoolgirl

Chennai: The state school education directorate has come under cloud with a class 10 student alleging that her science answer sheet in the board exam had been switched resulting in her scoring  two marks out of 75 in the theory segment.

G. Nanthini of government higher secondary school for girls at Thuraiyur in Tiruchy district told a press conference here on Saturday that she was shocked to find her abysmally low marks in science while the scores were quite high in the other subjects-including a centum in social studies — when she received her plus-one mark sheet last May.

She was given two marks out of 75 in the theory and 25 out of 25 in the practicals segment, scoring a total of 27 per cent.

However, she scored 68 out of 75 in the theory and 93 per cent (including 25 out of 25 in the practicals) when she took a re-examination in June (2015) which the examinations department of the directorate arranged after her family raised objections and suspected foul play.

Her father T. Gnanasekharan, a handloom worker, released at the media conference the photo-copies of the two mark sheets and also both the answer papers of Nanthini. He said the documents were obtained through persistent RTI efforts by a NGO, 'Satta Panchayat Iyakkam' (SPI), while his own application for re-evaluation of the May answer sheet was still pending. “I paid Rs 205 for the re-evaluation eight months ago but got no response till today”, he said.

He recalled that Nanthini had broken down when the mark sheet showed score of just two out of 75 in science theory. “She had been saying that she would get 74 out of 75 because she made only one small mistake in the paper”, said Anuradha, mother of Nanthini.

The school headmistress told the family to meet joint director Amudhavalli in the exams department of the school education directorate. "When we met the official at Chennai, she accused Nanthini of having someone else to write the exam for her. We were made to give a letter addressed to education secretary D. Sabitha saying that my daughter had done badly in science due to mental stress”, said Gnanasekharan.

NGO Satta Panchayat Iyakkam learnt about Nanthini's case and filed RTI petitions for obtaining her answer sheets. “The answer sheets showed that the girl had written ridiculous stuff. For instance, the answer for the question as to what should be done to prevent malaria was, ‘how can I make any suggestions about controlling malaria when there is no malaria in my area?’ The handwriting was not that of Nanthini”, said SPI president Siva Ilango.

When contacted, joint director Amudhavalli stoutly denied there was any malpractice in evaluating Nanthini's science paper. “As the issue involved the future of a girl, we took all the care to closely analyse her answer sheets-not only in science but other subjects as well-and found that the science paper had indeed been done by her. We spoke to her for three hours.

She admitted it was her paper that got two marks out of 75. Later she said it was not her paper. We fail to understand why the family and this NGO are making such an issue now”, she told DC.

SPI's Ilango said the family would press for a forensic investigation to prove that the answer sheet that fetched a score of 2/75 had not been written by Nanthini. “Such a probe will bring out the truth. If our suspicion proves right, it only means there is a big racket of switching answer sheets going on in the directorate. We hope that the government will concede in the interests of the schoolchildren, who slog all through for good scores in the hope that they could pursue higher education and get good jobs”, Ilango told DC.

As for Nanthini, she is now into the math-biology stream in the 11th class and hopes to become an IAS officer.