CBSE letter on Panchkula art fest flunks English test

Nitish Sharma

Tribune News Service

Kurukshetra, January 15

Errors ave been spotted in a letter sent by the regional office of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Panchkula, to school principals regarding the ‘Panchkula Art and Literary Festival-2016’. Besides some grammatical errors in the letter, the word ‘fest’ has been written as ‘test’ while the word ‘access’ has been written as ‘assess’.

Pratibha Singh, an English teacher at Gita Niketan Awasiya Vidyalya, Kurukshetra, said, “Being an English teacher, I am very upset to see the letter by a pioneer board working in the field of education for so long. The teachers are expected to maintain the standards, but what kind of quality the board is maintaining by sending such a letter.”

He said, “The board should edit letters before sending them and must appoint a person who specialises in drafting and editing.”

Another teacher on the condition of anonymity said, “The board is an important body that grants affiliation to schools and has the authority to cancel the same in case the schools fail to live up to the standards. The sender of the letter has so appallingly used the language that it calls for immediate scrutiny and condemnation by all.”

Reekrit Serai, vice-principal, Satluj Public School, Panchkula, where the fest will be organised in February, said the festival would be organised by the government and the letter was sent by the CBSE. “Some errors in the letter may be due to the autocorrect software and they remained unnoticed. However, a fresh letter has been sent by the school in this context,” he said.

Meanwhile, CBSE Regional Officer RJ Khanderao said, “The letter is to invite the stakeholders and the errors could be due to typographical error.”

The CBSE faced embarrassment last year also when the typographical error in the letter head of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani came to light. The minister’s name was spelt incorrectly in Hindi as well as the words “minister” and “sansadhan (in Hindi)”.