CBSE begins pre-exams preparations for Class 10 and 12 boards next year - The Indian Express

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has begun the pre-examination process for next year’s Class 10 and 12 Board examinations. The board has also invited bids to engage an agency to scan flying slips and finalise the data generated from them.

The flying slips carry the details of candidates, including their name, identification number and roll number. The selected agency will scan these flying slips using Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) scanners to generate raw data files, which will subsequently be collated and matched with the corresponding data, said an official.

A CBSE official said the exercise is part of the Board’s pre-examination activities and is aimed at digitising the large volume of candidate-related data.

“The examination-related activities are done in three phases — pre-examination, the actual examination period and post-examination activities. The flying-slip scanning exercise falls under the first category…under this, the board finalise the list of candidates’ details and asks the schools to submit the details online. Earlier, it was done manually by the schools, but now all these exercises are done online for the last couple of years,” said the official.

Once that is done, the schools are asked to take out a copy of it and call the parents and children to verify the entire information. After checking everything, they resubmit the entire thing online, said the official.

“…they are finalising all the data and details of the candidates who are going to appear in next year’s examination. I think for this purpose also they have asked that the flying slips be taken out by the vendor and put into complete details in the system so that they can look at it….The pre-examination details have to be digitalised and that is needed also. We cannot do it manually because now the number of candidates has become so large. All the pre-examination activities must be digitalised. There is no point in doing it manually. It will take time and will be cumbersome,” the official added.

Further, around 18 lakh students are in Class 12, and another 25 to 26 lakh are appearing in the Class 10 examination. “All such activities being done manually is an impossible task. There is every chance of errors. Since the last two-three years, the pre-examination process has been digitised totally…,” the official added.

As per details, the work involves scanning of flying slips and finalisation of data at the locations of respective Regional Offices at Ajmer, Prayagraj, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Ludhiana, Dehradun, Delhi (East), Delhi (West), Gurugram, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Noida, Panchkula, Patna, Pune, Raipur, Ranchi, Thiruvananthapuram, Vijayawada.

Officials said the selected agency will scan the flying slips containing OMR- and ICR-based information, collate and match the data, generate reports, and perform error removal from the data.

“The work, including input data preparation, processing and printing, will have to be done by the computing agency…List of Candidates (Admission Master) and Flying Slips having Centre Number, Roll Number, Subject Code, Candidate’s Name and Identification Number as Bar Code,” the tender document read.

The agency once selected will be given a two year term contract, and it will have to scan the flying slips through an image scanner (ICR/OCR) or OMR scanner, with the scanned number printed on each flying slip, and to create a raw data file, punch/verify/check and merge the flying slips which have been rejected in scanning.

Besides, officials said, the process will involve correcting any errors in the scanned centre number, roll number, subject code, candidate’s name and identification number. An edit list of invalid or duplicate roll numbers, candidates’ names, identification numbers, centre numbers and subject codes will also be generated and checked. The data file will be updated with the necessary corrections until all errors are removed.

Further, it will check and compare the data of scanned flying slips with the admission master provided by CBSE, report errors, and update till errors are removed.

“Data of candidates captured from the flying slips, duly matched with list of candidates in the proformas supplied by the Board on CD as per requirement of the board. Any variation in the particulars of the candidates in database and in the documents shall be treated as errors and shall be the responsibility of the agency,” the document read.

Officials said the scanning work is generally carried out two to three times a year — once during the Board’s year-end examinations, which are now conducted twice and are generally held between February and June, and again during the compartment examinations, usually held between July and August.

Further, as per documents, approximately 29.89 lakh candidates of classes 10 and 12 are expected to appear for the board examinations next year, 2027-28, across the 24 regions. Of the total, the highest volume is expected from Delhi (East) at 28.62 lakh, followed by Noida at 19.75 lakh, Prayagraj at 19.55 lakh, Ludhiana at 19.49 lakh, and Delhi (West) at 18.80 lakh.