Harivansh Roy Bachchan (sic) wrote the national anthem Jana Gana Mana and not Ravintra Nath Taigore (sic).
That is according to the answer key - uploaded by the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) - of this year's admission test to the Simultala Residential School in Jamui, one of chief minister Nitish Kumar's dream projects that came up in August 2010 on the lines of the Netarhat Residential School in Jharkhand.
The BESB conducted the entrance test on April 9 and uploaded the answer key on April 28. Experts pointed out several errors in the answer keys, which don't show the state of Bihar's education in good light, and claimed that the board had neither done proper homework in framing the questions nor in preparing the answers for the admission to an "elite" school.
"The answers of basic questions were incorrect," said Ramanand Sharma, former principal of Sir Ganesh Dutt Patliputra High School and former executive member of Netarhat Residential School. "One such question was who composed the national anthem. Tagore and Bachchan were included in the options, but in the answer sheet the correct answer was given as Bachchan."
The question was asked for the entrance test to Class VI.
Another question for the same class asked what the "national heritage animal" of India is. The options given were elephant, tiger, lion and Gangetic dolphin.
According to the answer key the correct option is tiger, which is actually wrong. The tiger is India's national animal, but the national heritage animal is the elephant.
Similarly, for the entrance test to Class VII, a question asked what the quantity of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere is. According to the answer key the correct option is 78 per cent, but the actual correct answer should be 21 per cent. Nitrogen is closer to 78 per cent in the atmosphere.
For the Class IX entrance test,it was asked what the unit of electric current is. The answer is given as volt, when it should have been ampere.
Out of 450 objective questions that were asked for the Class VI, VII and IX entrance tests, around 86 answers were incorrect in the answer keys, said sources in the know.
The entrance test was held for these three classes because in 2016 and 2013 no students were admitted in the school. The entrance test was held at 43 examination centres across the state, with Miller High School and Sir Ganesh Dutt Patliputra High School as the examination centres in Patna.
"We have asked the expert to upload fresh answer keys so that there is no confusion among students," claimed BSEB chairman Anand Kishor.
But till Sunday afternoon the board had not uploaded the fresh answers.
Apart from incorrect answers, there were spelling mistakes in many questions too - for example the butchering of the spellings of Rabindranath Tagore and Harivansh Rai Bachchan.
Asked about the errors in the question paper for a school that the chief minister wants to set up as a model institution, BSEB secretary Anup Kumar just said: "I am in a meeting."
A former official of Simultala Residential School said on condition of anonymity for obvious reasons: "This shows the negligence of the education department in holding an entrance examination in a fair manner."
Retired Patna University professor N.K. Choudhary also blamed the government: "This is reflection of total collapse of education system in Bihar right from primary to higher education. The experts who were given the task of framing the questions have done their work carelessly, which calls for strict action."
