Madhyamik examinees at a city school. A Telegraph picture

Madhyamik examinees alleged that three questions in Tuesday’s life science paper were from outside the syllabus.

The questions, carrying 14 marks, were in the groups A and C.

State secondary board president Mamata Ray said: “We will place the complaints before the examination committee and do the needful if they are found to be true.”

The two questions in Group C carried 13 marks. Question number 12, carrying eight marks, asked the students to draw a diagram of a simple reflex arc and identify the receptor and effector organs, and sensory and motor neurons.

Question number 13 had a part carrying five marks, which asked the examinees to draw a rohu fish.

Examinees in centres across the city alleged that they have never been taught to draw the diagrams of rohu fish or a simple reflex arc. There was another part to question 13, of three marks, which the students did not complain about.

“Of the two questions in Group C, we were to answer one. We were in a spot, as neither was in our curriculum,” said an examinee in a north Calcutta centre.

The third contentious question, carrying one mark, was in Group A (number I/vi). It asked the students to solve a problem using Mendel’s Laws. “We teach Mendel’s Laws in class, but solving problems using the law is not in the syllabus,” said Subhankar Sengupta, the general secretary of the Secondary School Teachers’ Association.

Apart from the “out-of-syllabus” questions, there was confusion among some examinees over the instructions in the English version of the question paper.

There were two sets of questions, under the old and new syllabi. Two students of an English-medium school, who had studied the new syllabus, said they had mistakenly answered the questions from the old syllabus because “of the vague instructions”. The board authorities said the complaint would be looked into.