As his board exams neared, Anshu Kumar Shakya, a class 12 student, felt unusually stressed and anxious. Pretty common among students, one would say. But his worries were entirely different. Shakya is bright, but he cannot see and needed a scribe to write his exams. His performance, he knew, depended not just on how hard he studied but also how well his answers were transcribed by his scribe. “It’s not easy to cope with the feeling that someone like me can never actually show what I know in exams,” says Shakya, a student of JPM Senior Secondary School in central Delhi, one of the city’s oldest and biggest schools for the blind.

The government-aided school has over 210 students and about 38 are presently appearing for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exams. And all, like Shakya, are dependent on scribes (individuals who can transcribe a student’s answers) — which poses a unique challenge to the school too.
 

So, unlike the heads of other schools, who are focused on ensuring their students are well-prepared, KJ Kuriyan, the principal of JPM, has to worry not just about the exam readiness of his students but also about getting the right scribes to write their exams. CBSE rules allow students to bring their own scribes — students who are a grade below the examinees. But most JPM students leave it to the school to find scribes for them.

In January every year starts the school’s search for scribes. “We want the best for our students, and approach top schools. But the problem now is the school exams for classes 9 and 11 are held simultaneously with the board exams for classes 10 and 12. This makes it difficult for schools to spare students to write exams for others,” says Kuriyan, adding, “ But thankfully, they are considerate and still send their students. Delhi Public School, Modern School, Birla Vidya Niketan and Hillwoods Academy are some of the schools whose students have written exams for JPM students over the years.
 

In JPM School’s high-ceilinged white and blue corridors, one can see students feeling their way in and out of the classrooms, up the stairs, to the playground. There is signage everywhere, but it seems it is more of use to visitors than students.

Many of them say their exam anxiety does not end with getting a scribe. A lot, they say, depends on their scribes’ writing speed, their handwriting, their ability to communicate and, above all, their command over the Hindi language. “Most of the scribes we get are very talented but since they come from English-medium schools, they sometimes have problems writing our papers fluently in Hindi, which is our medium of instruction,” says Sachin Kumar, 15, who is appearing for the class 10 board exams.

Certain subjects, he says, pose particularly peculiar problems.
Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/inside-delhi-s-schools-for-the-blind/story-AmE7G2EwG8JU4fHVQAka2K.html