According to the Hindustan Times, students in Uttarakhand appearing for their science examination received the question paper in Hindi, despite being taught in English.
Question papers for all examinations are set by the State Council of Education Research and Training and are then printed out by the district officials before being sent to the schools.
Last year, Uttarakhand’s education department changed the medium of instruction for the subjects to English for class 3 and class 6.
The chief education officer of Dehradun, Asha Painuly told the Hindustan Times that after the teachers found out that the question papers were set in Hindi by SCERT, English teachers in the school translated the questions for the students.
A senior official with SCERT Uttarakhand told the Hindustan Times,
We had set papers in both English and Hindi and given both soft and hard copies of the same to the education directorate, from where it was sent to the districts. Officials at the district levels did not check before printing the papers. District level education officers should have printed the question paper based on the medium of instruction used for the given subject (science). What can SCERT do if they did not check it on time?
The state education department switched to English as the medium of instruction at the start of the academic session 2018-2019.
