Students appearing for the Class 10 ICSE Kannada examination on Thursday had a tough day, with the question paper having several mistakes because of which, many of them were unable to understand the questions.
While some resorted to assuming what the questions were, others did not answer them at all.
“Most of the words in several questions had missing letters. The meaning of the words could change based on what letter we assumed it would be. There was a question where I could write answers to two possible questions, so I ended up writing both, while mentioning in the answer sheet why I did so,” said a student from St Joseph’s Boys High School.
Parents, who were standing outside the schools to pick up their children said that the ‘aum’ and ‘arkavaththu’ were missing in most of the words.
“Some of the words have a gap and only the first and last letters of the words were seen. There could be so many possibilities as to what the word is. The invigilator in my son’s school helped them figure out a few words but even she was unable to figure out most of them,” said Dhruva Rao, a parent of a student from Ryan International School.
A worried student who had written her exam at the Rajarajeshwari Nagar centre told The News Minute that Kannada was a difficult subject for her as it is not her mother tongue.
“We speak Marathi at home and Kannada is very difficult for me as I started learning it only four years ago, when my family moved to Bengaluru. I had studied really hard for the exam and had prepared a month ahead. I knew Kannada would bring my overall score down. Now I know for sure that I will not cross the 75 mark in Kannada,” the sobbing student said.
However, Nikitha Parashuram, a student from south Bengaluru, said that she had done really well despite the errors in the paper.
“For some reason, I could fill in the blanks easily. Kannada comes naturally to me and it has been one of the easiest subjects. So it was not that difficult for me. I told the invigilator the missing letters and she told the other students. It worked out for us,” Nikitha said.
An official with the ICSE Council said that they had been intimated of the printing errors from various schools across the state. “We have asked the schools to give the parents an email ID (ces@cicse.org). They can write to us and based on the feedback, we will decide further course of action,” the official said.