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New Delhi: Allaying concerns raised by students and parents on the drop in the CBSE Class 12 Board marks pass percentage, the Ministry of Education on Sunday dismissed its linkage to the new On-Screen Marking (OSM) mechanism and announced that students can also seek re-evaluation and verification of their answer sheets at reduced fees of Rs 100 each to address their doubts.
The overall pass percentage for CBSE Class 12 has fallen by three percentage points in 2026- 85.2% as compared to 88.39% in 2025 and also seen a decrease in number of 90%-95% scorers, triggering concerns that the OSM may be a reason for this.
School Education Secretary, Ministry of Education, Sanjay Kumar, said this is unlikely to be case as the OSM method of evaluation is followed internationally, across several international school boards as well as at Mumbai University and others in India and is a known testing standard that ushers in greater transparency, fair evaluation across regions and helps avoid totalling errors.
"There is year on year variation in pass percentages and this was particularly seen in pandemic years. We think it has stabilised now. OSM is a standard evaluation process followed internationally. We also want to underline that student welfare is of topmost priority for us and CBSE has therefore eased the validation and verification mechanism also to help address all doubts that may have arisen," Kumar added.
He said over 98 lakh answers sheets evaluated under OSM for Class 12 Boards went through three levels of security under the process.
Of these 98 lakh, about 13,000 answer sheets faced post scanning legibility issues due to use of lighter ink and these were evaluated manually.
While it is not yet clear if the OSM method will be used for evaluation of Class 10 answer sheets from next year, the CBSE chairperson said the Board will review the efficacy of the OSM on the basis of re-evaluation requests it receives and the number of cases it may have to increase marks owing to the same.
CBSE chairperson Rahul Singh pointed out that the OSM idea is not new to CBSE and was attempted in 2014 but then put on hold due to technical glitches and roadblocks from inadequate digital infrastructure to unprepared teachers and so on.
It has been resumed in 2026 after addressing these issues, readying better digital infrastructure at schools besides teachers' trainings and trial runs across five schools this January, Singh clarified, ensuring that adequate homework and technical checks were done before its rollout from March 17.
Singh also clarified that the method of evaluation has not changed with OSM in any way and it has only switched evaluation from hard copies to scanned soft copies.
He said step-wise marking system is still intact and OSM is a more fair, transparent evaluation mechanism that is pin code independent, saves transportation and evaluation cost and time and will also enable students to access validated/verified answer sheets within 24 hours unlike the 7-10 days previously.
The overall pass percentage for CBSE Class 12 has fallen by three percentage points in 2026- 85.2% as compared to 88.39% in 2025 and also seen a decrease in number of 90%-95% scorers, triggering concerns that the OSM may be a reason for this.
School Education Secretary, Ministry of Education, Sanjay Kumar, said this is unlikely to be case as the OSM method of evaluation is followed internationally, across several international school boards as well as at Mumbai University and others in India and is a known testing standard that ushers in greater transparency, fair evaluation across regions and helps avoid totalling errors.
"There is year on year variation in pass percentages and this was particularly seen in pandemic years. We think it has stabilised now. OSM is a standard evaluation process followed internationally. We also want to underline that student welfare is of topmost priority for us and CBSE has therefore eased the validation and verification mechanism also to help address all doubts that may have arisen," Kumar added.
He said over 98 lakh answers sheets evaluated under OSM for Class 12 Boards went through three levels of security under the process.
Of these 98 lakh, about 13,000 answer sheets faced post scanning legibility issues due to use of lighter ink and these were evaluated manually.
While it is not yet clear if the OSM method will be used for evaluation of Class 10 answer sheets from next year, the CBSE chairperson said the Board will review the efficacy of the OSM on the basis of re-evaluation requests it receives and the number of cases it may have to increase marks owing to the same.
CBSE chairperson Rahul Singh pointed out that the OSM idea is not new to CBSE and was attempted in 2014 but then put on hold due to technical glitches and roadblocks from inadequate digital infrastructure to unprepared teachers and so on.
It has been resumed in 2026 after addressing these issues, readying better digital infrastructure at schools besides teachers' trainings and trial runs across five schools this January, Singh clarified, ensuring that adequate homework and technical checks were done before its rollout from March 17.
Singh also clarified that the method of evaluation has not changed with OSM in any way and it has only switched evaluation from hard copies to scanned soft copies.
He said step-wise marking system is still intact and OSM is a more fair, transparent evaluation mechanism that is pin code independent, saves transportation and evaluation cost and time and will also enable students to access validated/verified answer sheets within 24 hours unlike the 7-10 days previously.
