Exams are not confined to educational institutions but are also used in other areas to evaluate talent for employment or elevation. In this context, the cancellation of two exams held in Uttar Pradesh in February is disturbing. The police recruitment exam taken by over 43 lakh candidates was held across 2,385 centres across 75 districts and had a mere 0.014 probability of success. The State Public Service Exam for the post of Review Officers had over 10 lakh candidates and was held across 2,000 centres in 58 districts.
There are two aspects of concern. One is the mental stress and anxiety of the candidates who would have not only worked to prepare but would have had to deal with the logistics and expenses to take the exam. Second is the reason for cancellation: leaking of the question papers. There is talk of coaching centres, individuals and candidates being involved in this.
In the past
The issue of question paper leakages has been a vexing problem in education. Just take a look at the following examples: January 2024, Rajasthan Teacher Recruitment Exam; April 2023, a teacher leaked a Class 10 exam paper in Telangana; 2020, four government employees were arrested with regard to a recruitment exam for junior engineers in Rajasthan; 2003, the CAT exam paper was leaked; 1997, the IIT-JEE question paper was leaked in some centres, including Tirupati.
Today with exams being conducted both offline and online, the question paper may be a printed one or an electronic one. In the first case, the issue of security begins at the press. The printer should be selected on the basis of reputation rather than the “lowest quote”. A representative of the examining organisation should be physically present during printing, packaging and despatch of the papers.
The packets should be received by the superintending officer of each centre who should store them securely until the exam. Anna University, Chennai, had adopted this procedure for its entrance exams, including the Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Exams, without a problem. On the other hand, when the question paper is sent to the exam centre to be printed, the email should be encrypted and the password made available only to the designated authority.
Online mode
When it comes to online exams, in many cases, the paper may differ from candidate to candidate. However, technical glitches can affect the conduct of the exam and also have an impact on the question paper security. This is what happened in the first edition of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) in 2022 and the exams had to be postponed in many centres
In 2018, technical snags of a large magnitude occurred in the online exam conducted by the Ministry of Education of the United Arab Emirates. The authorities immediately switched over to offline mode in the affected institutions and got over the difficulty with only 30 minutes delay. Such measures can be adopted by allowing for adequate manpower and basic materials such as a master copy of the question paper kept ready to create the required number of hard copies in convenient nodal centres.
The writer is Former Professor and Director, Entrance Exams and Admission, Anna University, Chennai.
