A rather horrifying experience has come to my notice. A child appearing for the Maths exam through the NIOS was doing fine, till about 60% of the questions completed, he asked the supervisor for an answersheet supplement as he had run out of pages on the provided answer booklet.

What follows is a horror and something parents MUST know and prepare their children for, till fixed.

The supervisor refused to provide him an answer sheet supplement stating that it is not allowed. Worried, the child asked for permission to continue answering on his own papers he had in his bag. Naturally, that was refused. He had to leave his paper incomplete in spite of being well in time, because he ran out of writing space.

His horrified parents approached authorities about this outrage, and were pointed out the guidelines. Page 23, clause no 7.1.5 states in bold:

There will be no continuation answer sheets. The candidates will have to complete their answer in the first Answer Book itself.

I have no idea what education system is up to these days, but when I was the age to give exams, there was a certain sadistic pleasure teachers took in getting us to write nice lengthy answers and use lots of supplements as some benchmark of brains, so this came as a total shock.

Regardless of the reasoning behind such an absurd clause, if it was to be enforced, then it should have been mentioned in a far more upfront manner – like in big letters on the answer book – “Use the space carefully, supplementary sheets will not be allowed” or something. Also subjects that may take up more space – involving equations, reactions, diagrams, drawings and such should have default booklets with abundant paper!

It is rather unbelievable that a student is able to write only 60% of the examination paper for lack of space.

Obviously this is a problem that needs to be fixed, but while it is still a problem, do spread the word among anyone appearing for NIOS exams among people you know, that the answer booklets are all the paper that will be allowed to answer on, and to use it carefully.

Note: I have no idea if this is the case with other boards, but it is worth confirming rather than a student getting a shock like this.