Education board fails to get its maths correct

Since students and teachers omit "Group D" in factorisation usually, students were shocked to find a question on the same in the paper. Parents and teachers have now demanded that the Education Board compensate this mistake by granting five marks to all students who have appeared for the crucial exam.

According to Prakash Naik, a teacher from Tilak Nagar, the topic-wise mark division schedule provided by the Divisional Education Board to all schools clearly mentions that the question paper on Algebra would contain factorisation problems based on "Group A" and "Group B" only andwould have weightage of two and three marks respectively. The schedule clearly mentions that "Group C" and "Group D" problems would have no weightage at all.

Naik has further said that Thursday’s Algebra paper contains a two-marks question on factorisation in question one, sub section four. Similarly another three-marks value question on the same topic has appeared in question number four, sub section "A", question number one. Both these questions have been derived from Group A and Group B of the factorisation topic from the Board’s text book, he said.

Thus, the total marks allotted to factorisation are five. However, the question paper also includes a problem on factorisation in question number five, sub section two. The problem given in the question paper has a weightage of five marks and has been printed as Group D problem in the Miscellaneous Exercise no 6 (see Problem no 31) of the textbook, Naik said.

"In the age of competition, where every marks counts in the career of a student, such a mistakewhich has occurred due to the fault of the Board may cost dear to students," Naik has said. He has demanded that the Divisional Education Board rectify its mistake in the interest of the students.