Exam cancelled as 3 teachers ‘force’ supdt to allow cheating

Ludhiana: After a superintendent of an exam centre in Ludhiana district told the Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) authorities how he was forced by schoolteachers to allow students to cheat in an exam, board secretary Swati declared the paper cancelled for Government Senior Secondary School, Ayali Khurd.
She told the TOI, “The mathematics exam held at the centre stands cancelled and we will reschedule it on May 25 or 27. I have also written to director general, school education, (DGSE) Pardeep Aggarwal to send a show-cause notice to district education officer (DEO) Jaswinder Kaur, observer Gurpreet Kaur from Government Senior Secondary School (GSSS), Gill, invigilators and three subject teachers.”
PSEB has also sent fresh instructions to DEOs to take more stringent action and check that subject teachers are not allowed to enter the exam centres.
Vinod Kumar, who is working as a history lecturer at Government Senior Secondary School, Kundanpuri, has been deployed as superintendent at Government Senior Secondary School, Ayali Khurd, from May 10.
Narrating the incident to the TOI, he said, “PSEB Class X term-2 mathematics board exam was being held on Monday. I was pressurised by three mathematics teachers of GSSS, Ayali Khurd, to allow the students to cheat. When I refused, teachers asked students to protest on the pretext of delay in the exam. However, the exam was started and completed on time.”
“We have one observer, one vigilance controller and two deputy superintendents who distributed the question paper on time for 252 students in seven classrooms of the school. If any student had faced any issue, (s)he should have objected then, but later three teachers entered the school and forced the students to protest. So I have brought this matter to the notice of the PSEB,” he added.
Meanwhile, Sukhdarshan Singh, a science master at a government school in Jagraon block and president of the Anti-Cheating Front, a group of government teachers who raise issues faced during exams, said, “Teachers are forced to allow cheating to achieve 100% result. Action should be taken against the guilty. Same thing was reported in Class VIII board exam when flying teams were sent by the PSEB.”