Parents demand Gujarat education board to give 12 marks as grace

The Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) might have announced grace marks to make up for blunders in the chemistry paper. But parents of affected students say they will continue with their agitation until their children are given at least 12 marks as grace marks.

A group of parents met at Law Garden on Wednesday night to plan further action for more grace marks for their children. After seeking the advice of experts in the subject, parents claim that there were mistakes worth 12 marks in the English and Gujarati medium papers of chemistry.

However, after repeated requests, the GSHEB announced 8 as grace marks for Gujarati medium students and 5 for English medium students. These grace marks were announced in lieu of mistakes in the paper. As for the multiple-choice questions which had more than one option that could be the right answer, marks for these will be given after tallying the answers with the answer key prepared by the board.

"This is not the way to give grace marks. We decided not to demand a re-test in the chemistry paper only with the interest of the students in mind. But we had demanded that the board should give around 12 grace marks to all the students," said a parent, Hemal Shah.

Another parent, Rajesh Rawal, said that they would continue with their protest till the board agrees to their demand. Some parents have also demanded that the committee of paper-setters and moderators should be changed and whoever was responsible for the mistakes should be punished.