In a goof-up during Class VIII examination of Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) on Thursday, students were given the question paper of Punjabi subject even as it was their Social Studies exam.
The Punjabi exam is scheduled on March 19 and the students were handed over wrong question paper, creating panic among the students and teachers.
As soon as the wrong paper was handed out, the students raised the alarm, forcing the staff on examination duty to swing into action and collect Punjabi question papers from students.
The Social Studies paper of Class VIII was to start at 1 pm. At the time of start, the staff on examination duty opened the envelop, marked as “Social Studies”. After opening the sealed envelop, the staff in many schools started distributing the question papers. But the question papers turned out to be of Punjabi subject and not Social Studies.
The goof-up is being blamed on the negligence of staff who were assigned the duty of ‘packing’ the question papers in envelopes and marking these packets with the subject name.
In the absence of any question paper of Social Studies subject, the staff on examination duty got copies of question paper from other exam centre on Whatsapp and e-mail, printed these and distributed the copies of Social Studies paper to students.
But this process of getting Social Studies paper from other centre and printing several copies of it delayed the exam start time.
Jaswinder Singh, district coordinator for Class VIII examinations in Faridkot, said the students were given extra time due to delay in the start of the exam. “We have informed the higher authorities in SCERT (State Council of Education Research and Training) about the issue,” he said.
Inderjit Singh, director, SCERT, said it was the mistake and negligence on the part of vendor who supplied the question papers. As the packets of questions papers, containing Punjabi papers, werr already marked as “Social Studies”, there was no mistake on the part of examination staff, he added.
“We have decided to cancel the Punjabi subject question paper after it was leaked and will get a new set of question paper for this subject. The SCERT has decided to impose fine on the vendor and blacklist him for this mistake,” the SCERT director said.
The SCERT also compensated the students for the time lost due to dealy in the start of the exam, he added.