Out of syllabus questions in KCET: 'May be leftover papers from last year'

'Out-of-syllabus questions accounted for 51 marks in the papers and KEA is responsible for this. Giving grace marks will not provide justice,' said Ninge Gowda, president of Karnataka State Pre-university College Teachers Association.

Several teachers, students and parents have expressed apprehensions over the out-of-syllabus questions in the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (KCET) 2024, held on Thursday and Friday. 

They suspect that the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) had issued the question paper which was set during KCET 2023. There were out-of-syllabus questions for 51 marks together from all four papers. 

“As the officials are defending their mistake, we suspect that they have given the previous year’s question papers. It is normal that during any exams, there will be 2-3 sets of question papers for security purpose. We suspect KEA distributed leftover question papers from the previous year,” said a lecturer with a private unaided PU college. 

Some felt that the faculties who set the question papers are not those who teach the subjects regularly in college.

“When the PUE department had updated KEA about the deleted syllabus, why were the lecturers setting the papers not informed about it? If they were regular lecturers, even if KEA failed to inform, they would have known. Here, we strongly suspect the role of those working with coaching centres, where they don’t follow PU board syllabus,” another lecturer said.

Ninge Gowda, president of Karnataka State Pre-university College Teachers Association, blames KEA for the mistake and demanded justice for students.

“Out-of-syllabus questions accounted for 51 marks in the papers and KEA is responsible for this. Giving grace marks will not provide justice,” he told DH. 

“We agree that out-of-syllabus questions appearing in exams due to oversight is common. But this is, perhaps, the first time in the history of any exams in Karnataka that out-of-syllabus questions accounted for 51 marks,” said another senior lecturer. 

The Karnataka State School College Parent Associations’ Co-ordination Committee, which filed the complaint before the government demanding inquiry, has decided to approach the court, seeking justice for 3.5 lakh students who wrote the test.