In the last 24 hours, over 115 petitions were filed on Change.org by CBSE students and parents for leniency in the evaluation of CBSE Class XII Mathematics papers which took place on Monday.
According to the press release published by Change.org, the biggest petition so far with 4500 signatures was started by a student from Guwahati. Other petitions were started by students from Kolkata, Chennai and other cities including Thrissur.
The Guwahati petition starter wrote on Change.org, “CBSE has broken the dreams of several students by setting a paper which was meant for IIT aspirants. This year CBSE Maths paper was tough as well as long and has made several students cry. CBSE should come out with a statement immediately to take care of their mental agony which will help them to concentrate on their next exam.”
“I urge the CBSE to give grace marks and be lenient in checking for the sake of young minds. They should be helping us every step of this highly pressurizing journey,” said another student.
The Maths paper on Monday left many students teary-eyed. “I prepared a lot throughout the year for the Maths paper. I also did many sample papers and completed papers that were given in the last few years. The four-markers and six-markers all were very difficult. The paper was also very lengthy,” said Vaishali, a student of a Chennai CBSE school.
Another student reiterated a similar struggle. “A student who has prepared thoroughly should be able to score about 95 per cent, but here every question was tricky and very lengthy. Every question took a lot of time to complete. There were so many people who were crying after the exams. We have been trained to answer a certain type of question, but the paper was completely different from that," said Rushali, another Class XII student.
The Maths paper was a trauma not just for students, but parents too. “What are you trying to judge in a teenager by giving them such papers? The questions were not at all from NCERT. We made our daughter practice question papers for the last five to six years of different regions in the country. It actually pains that the efforts of two years of Class XI and Class XII are ending this way,” said a parent of a Class XII student from Chennai.
He added, "These CBSE students have to compete with state board students and when they get better marks all the seats in colleges will be given to them. It is disheartening and frustrating as a parent when it is not even the fault of the child."