Full marks to students due to Misprint in HSC papers

Updated on: Wednesday, March 21, 2012

All students, who attempted questions of chemistry, physics-II and fisheries having printing errors, will get full marks.

For physics-II, the misprint was worth almost 10% of the total marks. Debashis Bhowmick, vice-principal of Nuva College and a PhD in physics, said, "Question number five was about finding the shortest wavelength for Paschen and Brackett series in hydrogen atom. However, instead of mentioning the symbol for angstrom, they printed a symbol which made no sense."

Sanjay Charalwar, principal of Mohota Science College, said, "The board has committed an error in printing and the usual practice is to give full marks to students who have either attempted the question or even written the question number in the paper."

There were two such errors in the chemistry subject, with one mistake each in paper-I and II. SS Goyal, lecturer at VB Junior College said, "In the first paper, there were numericals to be solved using Hess' Law but the data was wrong. They had printed H2O gas whereas H2O liquid should have been mentioned. The board has decided to give full four marks to anyone who attempted the question."Chemistry paper had same mistake as text book

The second chemistry paper of HSC examinations had a bigger mistake, due to incorrect data printed in the HSC text book itself, said SS Goyal, lecturer at VB Junior College . "In the text book, the action of HI on isopropyl methyl ether is mentioned as methyl iodide, while the correct answer is isopropyl iodide. The same question appeared in the paper and the board has decided to give full marks to students who choose either of the two options in the MCQ," he said.

Mistakes were also spotted in fisheries paper, an optional subject in the science stream. Sameer Phale, lecturer at Ambedkar College (Deekshabhoomi) said, "Spelling mistakes were galore in the fisheries paper, thus inconvenience to students. It is surprising that a question paper is set at the state level with so many people involved, and errors slip through so many levels of verification."

Rasesh Patel, an HSC student, said, "Whenever there is an error in the question paper we ourselves get confused if we are wrong. Precious minutes are wasted trying to find our mistake, whereas the fault lies in the question."

His friend Hemul Joshi said, "The board gives bonus marks only if we attempt the question, but if we did not understand it in the first place then we won't attempt it either. Board should give bonus marks to everyone."

Full marks to students due to Misprint in HSC papers

More Education news