Students protest in Bhubaneswar on Friday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, May 3: About 120 students of Chandrashekharpur Government High School today demonstrated near the state secretariat complex because they scored far less marks than they had expected.

“This has happened to all the students of the school. There is a difference of 30 or 40 marks in subjects such as Odia, English and Sanskrit,” said Radharaman Barik, a parent.

Students and their guardians protested near the Board of Secondary Education zonal office here too.

“I had expected 95 in Sanskrit but scored only 75 and in English, I had expected 75 but scored just 40,” said Chinmay Sahoo, a student.

While matric results are generally announced in the last week of June, the department this year announced that it would announce results by the end of April and did so on April 30.

Goof-ups were reported the same day from across the state with at least 149 meritorious students of various schools awarded zero and a couple of students declared failed.

Guardians of the students, who also joined the demonstration, said the school was one of the best in the city and was popular for good scores.

“If required, the authorities can review the answer sheets and compare the pre-board exams to judge the students. But with scores like this, our children will not get admission in any good college,” said Bidulata Mohapatra, a parent.

“They do not have the right to play with our careers. The department should rectify its error, re-evaluate and publish our marks by May 10. Otherwise, it will be difficult for us to enrol ourselves in Plus Two courses, admissions for which begin on May 25,” said Saroj Nayak, another student.

While chasing the April deadline is said to be a reason behind the goof-up, engaging inexperienced teachers for evaluation of papers following the strike by block-grant teachers is considered another. As many as 8,000 teachers of block-grant schools did not take part in the evaluation forcing the department to pull in contractual and inexperienced teachers for evaluating answer sheets.

Block-Grant Teachers Association president Prashant Pati said according to board guidelines, a teacher needed at least five years of experience to evaluate science papers, 10 years of experience to evaluate arts papers and 15 years of experience to evaluate literature papers.

“But they engaged at least 2,000 contractual and private teachers, most of whom were newly appointed, and this led to all these problems,” said Pati, adding that the board did away with the top 100 students’ list to avoid further problems.