Students in quandary over math paper

Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) Class 12 students were in a state of shock after seeing the mathematics question paper this year. Not just students but even teachers claim that it was the toughest question paper CBSE has ever come up till date.

While many students have opted to file petitions at Change.org, others are in quite distress over their performance. Young Hans tried to talk with teachers, students and parents and all of them expressed anguish over the toughness of paper.
“It was a total nightmare; I was completely unable to stop my tears after seeing the question paper. It’s not just me but all the students at my examination centre feel that the math paper was very tough,” rues Abhigna Varma, from Geetanjali High School, Hyderabad.

Seeta Kiran, Principal and Regional Director of DAV Schools have commented, “It was a mindless job done by the paper setter and un-fortunately this is the second time CBSE board has done something like this.” “I would not call it tough but, the paper was too lengthy for sure. Students had to work out a lot even on two marks problems, which resulted in trauma in few kids.

We do agree that it should not be a complete pro student paper but it surely should be a balanced one,” notes Seeta Kiran. “The question paper had two or three problems which are from NCERT textbook, which were easy to solve but majority of the problems, were very high level. Many of my friends have left at least 30 marks because for understanding the question alone took more than 7 minutes and another 10 minutes in solving them,” says Shreyansh Desai, Class XII, Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Begumpet, Hyderabad.

Few students are even claiming that most of the problems were out of syllabus. But M Chitra, mathematics teacher at Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Begumpet, Hyderabad strikes out the claim made by students and shares, “Math question paper was very tough, but not out of syllabus.”

Explaining further she says, “The question paper was not student- friendly, it was designed for the IIT aspirants but not for the average and above average students.” “The two-mark questions were very lengthy and almost took 10 minutes for majority of students to solve it, four mark questions were tougher than the two mark questions,” she rued.

“As per the CBSE rules, difficulty level of question paper should be 15 per cent, but it seems that CBSE has not followed its own rules,” adds Chitra. Parents are equally worried about the issue and are demanding leniency in paper correction.