mumbai

Updated: Oct 12, 2017 10:05 IST

The number of answer sheets that have gone missing in the University of Mumbai’s assessment software seems to be increasing each week. While MU officials said the answer booklets of 1,600 students were missing two weeks ago, the current total is now 2,500.

To make matters worse, five months after exams began, a few thousand answer booklets in the on-screen marking (OSM) software are yet to be assessed.

“We found around 300 more barcodes — from answer booklets — but can’t find the matching answer sheets on the software. Around 2,500 students’ answer booklets are missing,” said a senior official. After initially announcing that the answer booklets of more than 28,800 students were misplaced in the OSM software, the university changed their statement within two weeks and maintained that only 1,600 students had been affected.

At a recent board of examination meeting, it was decided that students whose answer booklets were missing would get an ‘average’ score. This means a student would get an average of the total marks he scored in other subjects for the missing answer paper.

While former senate members told HT that such a provision was not part of the state university’s act, they said average scores have been used in “crisis situations”, where less than 50 students’ answer booklets were missing.

“The average will be calculated on the basis of the marks scored by a students in his remaining subjects. We are trying to find out how many answer booklets are missing before we can come up with average scores for all students,” added the official. He said MU plans to release all results within the next week.

While missing answer booklets are one reason why results have not been announced yet, another reason is that answer booklets in the OSM are yet to be assessed.

“There are some subjects in which only one or two answer booklets are pending assessment. We are finding it difficult to get those teachers to finish assessment. However, the assessment will be completed before Diwali vacations,” said the official.’