For the reexamination, students first need to apply for retotaling, and if they are still dissatisfied with the results, they can ask to see copies of their answer sheets. If the grades don’t make sense then they can apply to get their answer sheets reexamined. Every year, thousands of students apply for retotaling, saying they obtained less marks than they had expected.

Ram Raj Khakurel, the examination controller, said reexamination was offered because many students had complaints, even after seeing their answer sheets. A team of experts will reexamine the answer sheets after students pay the required fee, he said.

“We hope the new move will address all the dissatisfactions students have over their results,” Khakurel told the Post.

As many as 8,024 students had applied for retotaling this year and around 11 percent—862—got their grades increased in the results published on Wednesday.

The results of the 449,642 students who took their grade 10 national board examinations was published on June 27, showed a huge disparity in the performance between students from private and public schools.

Following a directive from the National Information Commission, the controller’s office, in 2011, had started to allow students to see copies of their answer sheets. However, there was no mechanism to file complaints, even if marking mistakes were discovered. A 2014 study by the controller's office showed that errors made while marking the answer sheets were primarily responsible for unexpected results. The study showed that 63 percent of mistakes were due to the negligence of examiners.

In a majority of erroneous results, the marks granted on the examinees’ answer sheets were stated incorrectly on the cover page for the final scoring, with some pages in the answer sheets were not even marked. Though the examination controller's office said that negligent examiners would face repercussions, the number of mistakes while evaluating answer sheets hasn’t decreased.

Education experts say as examinations’ results have a direct impact on the careers of the students, every measure should be taken to minimise such mistakes.

“The fact that marks of around 11 percent of the applicants has changed means there are many problems that needs to be sorted out,” Binay Kusiyait, a professor at Tribhuvan University, told the Post.

Kusiyait said that these errors show the incompetence of controllers and can even affect the reliability of the examinations.